


Virtue & Virtuosity

by Firerose



Category: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/F, F/M, Female-Centric, No Northanger Abbey knowledge assumed, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 09:13:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5451338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firerose/pseuds/Firerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Fanny was the mute earth to Mary's leaping fire, the gnarled oak to her fluttering songbird, the mirror-bright millpond to her restless waves. If one could somehow, with propriety, squeeze both ladies into a single body, the resultant heroine would be beyond anything shewn by Mrs. Radcliffe! She might paddle down the Amazon, contest a knotty theological point with the Pope, battle venomous water snakes with a hat pin and a bottle of hartshorn, and sink into a dead faint at the villain’s merest glance, as if he were some species of basilisk!' Or, <i>Mansfield Park</i> meets <i>Northanger Abbey</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labellementeuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labellementeuse/gifts).



No one who had ever seen Mary Crawford in her youth, could have failed to have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her nearest relations, her own temper and understanding, the disposition of her dearest friends; all were equally propitious. She had the fortune to be orphaned at an interesting age, and to have lost the care of a mother just when she was most in want of a mother’s guidance. Nor were these her only advantages. Her person lacked nothing an observer could desire; and her mind was quite as well developed as her figure. She had imbibed all the information that a select London seminary could offer—which is to say, she could cap a quotation; offer _bon mots_ on any proper topic; discourse sweet nothings in French and Italian; berate the squalid in a landscape; beguile the ears with her performances upon the pianoforte and the harp; sketch portraits whose subjects could be made out after only a _very_ few guesses; diagnose the exact season of an old gown, no matter how cleverly it had been refurbished; and if she had ever chanced to gain any knowledge upon a serious subject, she had the wisdom to conceal it. In short, no accomplishment was lacking that befitted a young lady with a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. To be sure, she was most unhappily named. You may meet a plain Mary anywhere! Her surname could not perhaps be helped, though her forebears had neglected their duty to preface their name with the properly heroic ‘de’ or ‘di’ or ‘von’; but her parents were sadly mistaken in their choice of praenomen for their only daughter. She should have been a Mariana, a Marissa, or even a Marelda! But every heroine has her particular thorny crown to wear, and Miss Crawford wore hers as proudly as if it were fashioned of the purest gold.

To these, and other heroic qualities it would be wearisome to list, in being cast out from the home of her youth by her wicked uncle the Admiral, and obliged by the cruelty of her only brother to take refuge in the wilds of Northamptonshire, she added the distinction of that remorseless persecution which is the lifeblood of any heroine worthy of a reader’s notice. This fortuitous event occurred in her twenty-second year. In token that the opening leaves of her heroic adventures had, at last, begun to be inscribed, Miss Crawford discovered, within three hours of her arrival in the county, that a baronet resided not half a mile distant! It is unfortunate that there were no lords to be had; but a baronet at a distance of half a mile must be accounted the equal of half a dozen lords at ten or twenty times that distance, at least to those with no carriage to call their own, and the lady spared no exertion in becoming acquainted with her noble neighbours. The baronet himself was out of the country. Being married, he could be but little loss; and his two sons—both handsome, young and single—were eager to supply any deficiency.

Miss Crawford soon proved herself cast in the heroic mould, by learning to ride before she was taught—or as nearly so as any heroine ever written. Everybody remarked on it! ‘Such a fine seat for a lady!’ was the opinion of Dr. Grant, that acknowledged expert on all matters equine; and even Mr. Edmund Bertram, in whose breast honesty too oft overcame good manners, allowed her to be a natural at the discipline. Now might she leap on any convenient steed to escape the villain’s schemes—provided that it should happen to be equipped with a lady’s saddle. It remained only to get the knack of swooning—I am ashamed to own her sadly lacking in sensibility—and to learn the trick of paddling an Indian canoe down the rapids, and her education as an heroine might fairly be said to be complete. Alas, that Mansfield Park should have no rapids! The geography of England is very much at fault, that so many of her heroines should be situated so far from their natural domain of jagged peaks, rushing torrents, and sunless forests.

The occasion of the riding lessons was to intrude another young lady, one Fanny Price, upon our heroine’s notice; and Miss Price soon robbed Miss Crawford of fully half her enjoyment in the exercise, by proving how it should rightfully be hers. How vexatious! Not that Fanny—for so Mary soon called her in her heart—was the villain; indeed, Mary thought she might be the key to the mystery, though what that mystery was, had yet to be unfolded. Her character was itself an enigma. It was so hard to wring a word from her, beyond ‘yes’ and ‘no’! She was the mute earth to Mary’s leaping fire, the gnarled oak to her fluttering songbird, the mirror-bright millpond to her restless waves. If one could somehow, with propriety, squeeze both ladies into a single body, the resultant heroine would be beyond anything shewn by Mrs. Radcliffe! She might paddle down the Amazon, contest a knotty theological point with the Pope, battle venomous water snakes with a hat pin and a bottle of hartshorn, and sink into a dead faint at the villain’s merest glance, as if he were some species of basilisk!

Another pen has described the events that followed—theatricals blighted; a traveller’s return from untold dangers; Hymen’s chalice drained to the lees; a tearful sister reunited with her long-lost brother; a ball opened by another; her own lover gone, gone without a word—and for _such_ a purpose!—a most astonishing proposal made, urged and, most astonishing of all, _rejected_! As scene succeeded scene, and time stripped summer’s clothing from the trees to reveal the bare boughs of winter, a sense of unease, even of dread, stole over Mary. She did not begrudge her dearest brother’s heart—she could hardly marry him herself! Nor did she repine at his being brought low, for so had he treated several ladies she numbered among her nearest friends. She did think, some once or twice, that it might have been pleasant to have been offered her own sip from Hymen’s cup, before it was dashed from her lips—before her lover should have been sundered from her forever! She would be content to live on _half_ her brother’s income, or a _very_ little more. Her needs were so moderate; her wishes so temperate! A modest estate, not half so great as Sotherton, or Mansfield, or even Everingham; a house in London, not one tenth as grand as the palace in Wimpole Street that was Maria Rushworth’s prize. She asked so little! _Why_ had he not spoken?

But no, even _that_ was not what disturbed her repose, not six nights in seven. Her greatest affliction was a notion, a most undignified, humiliating notion, that crept up on her—the notion that she might be merely trespassing in the pages of another, very different, heroine’s novel. It was not to be borne!

‘Did Edmund not come to the point before he left?’ was all the consolatory balm dropped onto her breast by her beast of a brother. ‘When was it he was to take orders?’

‘I don’t recall,’ said she, bravely, if falsely. The deed was done—three days done! ‘It is a matter of indifference, I assure you.’

‘Very indifferent! We shall all be star-crossed lovers together, as soon as he returns.’ And at that Henry commenced expatiating on his sweet Fanny’s qualities, over his breakfast eggs. It had become his favourite topic, and swiftly did he forget that his prize had yet to be won. Mary thought she might suffocate beneath her rival’s limitless virtue, heaped on top of her in shovelfuls, like earth onto a coffin. He would teach her to swoon! The room was so stifling!

She sprang up from the table, and strode over to the window to refresh herself, wishing that _her_ lover might be there to admire the lightness of her figure, or the sprightliness of her gait. She had forgotten—a clergyman must pluck out his eyes rather than enjoy either. The Gothic window’s stone mullions were like bars. The casement would not open! She would wither away in this mouldering old parsonage, like Ophelia in her nunnery!

‘Here, let me try,’ said her brother. He managed the sticking catch with all the deftness of a hero. (But, of course—if _Miss Price_ were the heroine, _he_ must be the hero. It was a lowering thought.) ‘It’s a dirty morning for a walk,’ said he, peering doubtfully up at a sky the colour and consistency of porridge. ‘I should not be surprized if it were coming on to snow. But I shall brave it for your sake, Mary, if you like.’

‘Oh, my dearest Henry!’ she cried. ‘If I tell you what I should truly like, would you do it for me? Would you take me to Bath?’

Seeing her real distress, and discerning its cause in Edmund’s silence, Henry was all brotherly concern. His carriage and his person were at her command. He was always ready to perform any service for his sister that involved him in no trouble, and hardly any expense. Such affection must speak for itself! They staid but to pay their farewell visit to Mansfield Park. With equal sincerity did Mary regret the necessity of leaving before Edmund’s return, and Fanny that of her two friends leaving at all. Henry’s regrets would have been rather more heartfelt, but that his spirits were buoyed by Fanny’s depressed countenance—which could only be attributed to the unwelcome tidings of his departure—and his firm resolve to mend her spirits by returning to Mansfield within a day or two. He really meant to do so.

Alas, the perfidy of fate! When two such lovers as Fanny and Henry are parted, some mischance must always ensue to prevent their swift reunion. If the lady does not succumb to consumption, the gentleman is sure to be fatally wounded in a duel; at the very least, the traveller will be abducted by banditti. In the event, the augured snow fell thick and fast, a carriage horse cast a shoe, and Henry caught a cold. It was five days before the indefatigable lover could bestir himself from the rooms they had bespoken at the White Hart. Five days! His poor sister was bereft. She was come to Bath to be miserable, and she felt miserable already. To be immured five days in a common posting inn! The noise! The hubbub! She would run mad! Bath in January was a wasteland! There was no one to see, no one to talk over whom she had not seen. What were balls, with no devoted partner to dance with? What were concerts, with no admirer to defer to her infallible taste? Or plays, with no sympathetic soul to discuss how well the actors acquitted themselves? She could not conceive of why she had wanted to come to Bath. _Why_ had she not bargained for London? She could have been staying with her dear, dear friend Mrs. Fraser, with all the joys of talking over Edmund’s treachery in her elegant dressing-room. The topic could not have been avoided. She had mentioned his name more than once in her correspondence with both Janet and her sister Lady Stornaway, and the anxious curiosities of her two dearest friends could not have been satisfied with less than a complete account of the affair.

Happily for our unjustly afflicted heroine, the very morning after such ghastly reflections had stolen all her repose, an event occurred to solace her loneliness, and to put her absent friends from her mind. Scarcely had she sunk into a seat by the Pump-room’s great clock, to while away the arid hours in watching the ceaseless parade of dowds, when a fashionable lady of similar years to her own, who had been likewise employed, abruptly addressed her. ‘Can it be? Are my eyes deceiving me? No, it is Miss Crawford, I swear it! We met at Mrs. Hurst’s little soirée in Grosvenor Street.’ And she pronounced herself to be one Isabella Thorpe. In any London drawing-room, Mary would, very likely, have disdained the acquaintance—it was really very slight. But Bath was no London, and in Bath, a friend—a pretty, stylish friend—was an asset not so lightly to be cast aside; and so she smiled and greeted Miss Thorpe—‘ _dear_ Isabella!’—with every appearance of delight. Oft is the mere performance of virtue rewarded! The pair took a turn about the room; and the discourse of a few minutes was enough to confirm Isabella in being all that was amiable, and the two young ladies as in agreement on every material point—preferring London society to Bath’s, speculation to vingt-un, Mrs. Radcliffe to Madame d’Arblay, and redcoats to cassocks. In short, they had not passed the great clock three times, before feigned friendship blossomed into true intimacy. Mary’s pleasure in her companion could only be increased by the certainty, that her new friend’s entire ensemble was less costly than her own hat.

Five days it was, before her beast of a brother owned himself well enough to perform that most essential of fraternal duties, in offering his arm to his sister on her daily promenade at the Pump-room; and when this long-awaited event at last took place, Mary was all eagerness to introduce him to her bosom friend. Besides all the natural inducement of adding a very pleasant face to his circle of acquaintance, she had, within half an hour of meeting Miss Thorpe, conceived a scheme for her amusement—Bath was so dull, one must get amusement somehow! Isabella Thorpe was a tall, fair girl, much in the mould of Maria Rushworth—they might have been long-lost sisters! For what else could account for a resemblance so striking that (were it not for the difference in estate) a man might be beguiled by one as easily as by the other? A family that might pick up one daughter in Portsmouth, might surely lose another in London. Stranger things have been recorded in the annals of fiction. Mary had once believed her brother partial to Maria; in setting her image before him, she thought to try his devotion to his sweet Fanny. It was a kindly service to the two lovers. No passion can be considered true, unless first tested in the refining fires of competition. Mary was giving her brother the opportunity to shew all his virtue of constancy; and if Henry’s passion could not withstand a portionless chit from Putney, _well_!

The introduction was soon made, and Mary had the keen pleasure of seeing how the two people dearest to her should get on. They had run through all their ‘delighted’s and ‘enchanted’s, exhausted the question of how often Miss Thorpe visited Bath—the family staid each winter, ‘London in January is so horrid!’—and were actually in danger of falling silent, when Mary averted the catastrophe by recalling that morning’s _Gazette_ , in which the nuptials of Mr. Henry Tilney—the younger son of General Tilney, of Northanger Abbey—to one Miss Catherine Morland were announced. Did Isabella happen to be acquainted with either of the parties? Mary’s own acquaintance with the gentleman was slight. The General was a friend of the Admiral; but a second son—and one who had been so inconsiderate as to have taken orders, before they were introduced—could _never_ be an object. She was resolute. It could not be!

‘A little,’ replied Isabella. ‘I am glad to see Miss Morland so well settled. She is the sweetest of girls, and deserves to be the happiest of wives.’ She turned her angelic face towards Henry, and fixed her sparkling eyes on his dark ones. ‘Beauty of character is so much more important than beauty of person, do you not agree, Mr. Crawford?’

Henry was quick to make a civil comment, about the two beauties being united in the persons of his two fair interlocutors. ‘I make it a rule never to admit any gentleman named Henry to my acquaintance,’ he went on to say. ‘But does he not have an elder brother named Frederick? Captain Frederick Tilney?’

The unguarded look that crossed Isabella’s face at that name, made Mary wonder if her friend had once staked all on becoming an abbess; she was almost certain of it! Brave Isabella soon recovered her composure. She believed she might have met him once; she could not be certain. ‘One redcoat is so like another!’

‘I fear Frederick Tilney is a redcoat no more,’ said Henry, gravely. ‘He was discharged last spring. He had the bad luck to get a piece of wadding in the eye at firing practice. The poor fellow’s musket must have been faulty. Lost the sight of the eye.’

Isabella let out a shriek of horror, and said everything that was proper; but her effusions of sorrow over a gentleman whom she could not swear ever to have met, were all to be wasted, for Henry’s greater height just then delivered him an intelligence the ladies lacked.

‘Fanny is here!’ he cried, with more warmth than politeness, and more surprize than either—and without another word, he took his leave of them.

His sister had the office of making his excuses, to comfort her in the entrance of her rival heroine, and the overthrow of all her schemes. ‘Now, my dear Isabella,’ she said, ‘I shall not have you thinking my brother a savage! Henry is, in general, a model of courtesy, I assure you. I have lived in a house with him these six months past, and can attest he is as docile a gentleman as ever you could wish.’ It was true; Henry had as sweet a temper as any man in England—if one were to ask him to perform some task for which he had no inclination, he would never snap or snarl, as some men would, but civilly decline, or pretend he had not heard. Besides, it mattered not. Mary would wager her sweet Belle would be glad to enact Beauty to her brother’s Beast, even if he should growl, and spit, and slaver, and threaten to bite her pretty fingers off!

 


	2. Chapter 2

Fanny Price in Bath! It was like encountering a unicorn grazing amidst the shops of Bond Street. With her brother’s broad back to guide her eyes, Mary eventually made out the slender form of her nemesis amongst the stouter hordes—and now her brother was bowing, and giving her his arm, and leading her back to his party. How horrid was it, to be so relentlessly pursued! So remorselessly persecuted! What feelings must be coursing through our heroine’s breast? Mary on her monument could not pretend to patience, but she could smile at grief; and—as names were exchanged, and healths cordially enquired of those one hopes never to meet again upon this earth—she smiled indeed, to detect the traces of hasty alteration in her rival’s gown. That sprigged muslin with its green trimmings had once graced Maria Rushworth’s fuller figure, she was sure of it! Fanny was fortunate not to have been decked out in green baize, she thought; Mrs. Norris was quite equal to such a thing.

But what was Fanny Price doing in Bath? That was the question, and such was Mary’s candid nature, it was a question no sooner conceived, than posed. Poor Fanny was overcome with confusion. She was quite unequal to the explanation. She shrank away, and dipped her head to conceal a face that must be overspread with blushes; those incoherent syllables that escaped her lips, were rendered even less comprehensible by her bonnet. ‘Portsmouth—cold—Mrs. Rushworth—could be spared—’ was all her auditors might distinguish, and it fell to Henry to shoulder the burden of the narrative.

It seemed that his had not been the only cold in Bath. Old Mrs. Rushworth had suffered bitterly with one—not her own (she had an excellent constitution), but her companion’s. She had happened to mention the circumstance in one of her letters to Mrs. Norris, and that lady had selflessly offered to sit with her sister, to enable her niece to succour the beleaguered Mrs. Rushworth. Henry delivered all this with an admirably straight face; he did not indicate by so much as a shrug, his contempt at such a stratagem. Isabella looked all her incredulity, but she was too discreet to commit it to words. To be sure, it could not be Fanny’s doing. However coy she might be about her affections for Henry, a maiden so pure could never conceive a scheme so brazen. Neither could Mrs. Norris have been the author; she was equal to anything on her own behalf, or for her dear Bertram nieces; but she would never stir so much as a foot for Fanny’s sake. It must be Sir Thomas!

Their party soon suffered a diminution. Isabella must visit the circulating library—there was actually a rumour of a new novel from the author of _The Monk_! Such a circumstance could not be ignored; Isabella was most unwillingly torn from her friends’ side. Fanny, in her turn, pleaded Mrs. Rushworth’s shopping. Her plea was not allowed—she must be detained—she had hardly exchanged one word with her dear friends! But what could they speak of? Topic after topic was tried, without pleasing all the parties. Fanny could not speak of Bath—Mary would not speak of Mansfield. Henry asked after Maria Rushworth; but that name, pronounced by his lips, brought on such a renewed attack of shrinking, and blushing, and examining the floor most minutely, that he felt his misstep keenly.

‘What think you of novels, Miss Price?’ he next enquired. _That_ topic must be unexceptionable. ‘Will you be joining Miss Thorpe in haunting Duffield’s library?’

Fanny could not say. She hoped she might have leisure for reading, if Mrs. Rushworth could spare her. Mary teasingly ventured, ‘Will you read Mr. Lewis’s new production?’ Fanny owned she had never before heard of the author. ‘You should certainly read _The Monk_ ,’ Mary urged, with a smile. ‘No lady’s education can be said to be complete without it.’

‘Cousin Edmund has never happened to mention the work.’

‘Oh, but gentlemen are never experts on ladies’ reading, are they, Henry?’ Her brother had a speaking look to go along with his agreement—but the two fond siblings had a rule never to interfere with each other’s pleasures. ‘I can lend you my copy, if Mrs. Rushworth cannot, and you don’t care to purchase a subscription.’

‘That would be a kindness,’ said Fanny, in a faint voice; and it was settled that the Crawfords would call on Mrs. Rushworth on the morrow.

The devoted lover was in extasies with this outcome; and so enraptured was he, that he did not quibble overmuch with his sister’s methods. ‘What are you about, my witch of a sister?’ was all his protest, as he gave that sorceress his arm at the Pump-room portico. ‘I will not have you hurt my sweet little Fanny. With a title like that, she probably thinks it some religious tract!’

Mary laughed. She was counting on it! ‘You will not make me believe that reading any novel ever printed can harm—or, if it should, the poison resides not in the pages, but in the reader.’ Oh, most paltry effort! Most tepid panegyric! I should leap to the defence of the literary form myself, but that a sister author has penned one far more eloquent than any I could hope to conjure—I can only conjecture that no page of _The Monk_ had ever come that lady’s way! Yet a heart so pure as Fanny’s—a mind so unpolluted with error, a breast so armoured with principles—must surely shrug off any venom that mere words might brew—such must be Mary’s reasoning; or perhaps it was the simple thought that what had not hurt _her_ , could never injure the more robust virtue of a Fanny Price! But it seemed our heroine was not so secure in her thesis, as to argue it further; she reverted to the mischief of the Mansfield family, as if in cover of some of her own. ‘I swear I could scarcely keep my countenance at that tissue of lies!’ she cried. ‘I cannot say which is more impossible to credit—Mrs. Norris sacrificing one drop of her own comfort for Fanny, or Mrs. Rushworth ever being in need of succour!’

‘It was no doing of Fanny’s,’ said Henry. ‘Sir Thomas threatened to send her back to her family at Portsmouth. Can you believe it! In January! Her constitution would not be equal to it. But I do believe she would rather have gone there, than consent to such an underhanded scheme—if she had been given her own choice.’

‘Sir Thomas must be determined to catch you, my dear Henry.’

‘There is no catching to be done,’ said the ardent lover. ‘My heart lies beneath her dainty feet.’

‘I pity Fanny from _my_ heart, I really do,’ Mary interposed, all anxiety to head off another review of all his loved one’s perfections. ‘She is like to find she has exchanged one fire-breathing dragon for another.’

‘I take your meaning, sister. _You_ have seen as clearly as I have, how she is placed in that house—how they abuse all her gratitude and devotion! Fanny feels family ties most strongly, even when the recipient is unworthy. Yes, even so unworthy as Mrs. Norris! I do not think she will suffer as keenly under Mrs. Rushworth, as under her aunt Norris.’

Such was the discourse of brother and sister, as they picked their way across Stall Street, where stood their hostelry. It was a most risky endeavour! The snow of the previous week had, for the most part, melted; but the grimy piles swept from the nearby thoroughfare still loomed like barricades, to baffle their footsteps, and conceal their path. When at last the labyrinth had been traced, the mystery at its heart penetrated—when, in short, they had regained such comforts as a common posting inn might offer, Mary judged the moment propitious to petition her brother to bespeak some lodgings for a month or so. The alacrity with which he fell in with her plan, assured her that Fanny’s stay in the spa was not to be a short one; and before the day was out, they had left the din and dirt of the White Hart behind, and were ensconced in all the quiet elegancies of Laura Place. If Mary thought it strange, that her bachelor brother’s taste in houses should so nearly answer to that of an elderly widow, she was wise enough to make no mention of the fact.

While her brother was engaged in seeking out lodgings, Mary found employment in a trip of her own to Duffield’s establishment—for should she happen to own a copy of Mr. Lewis’s most notorious novel, it must be mouldering an hundred miles away in London—and there she bargained for all three scandalous volumes. For her dear, sweet Fanny, she would begrudge no sacrifice, neither of time nor of shillings; and our heroine’s happy reward was a repose shattered by seductions and ravishments, a couch attended by debauchery, dismemberment, devilry, and every kind of depravity—for it was, of course, quite impossible, to lend the girl a book so obviously innocent of a reader’s caress!

The morrow dawned as mild and balmy a day as ever winter offered. Mary’s heart almost misgave her; her resolve almost failed—almost did she go scurrying back to the bookshop, like some timid mouse, to lay out another 17 _s_ 6 _d_ on _Udolpho_ , or _The Italian_! But heroines must be cast from the sternest steel; she would dare the dragon’s lair, and she would dare it with _The Monk_ in her reticule, or she would die in the attempt! The dreadful journey was no sooner commenced than complete. Nothing more sinister than Mrs. Rushworth was concealed behind the door of 14, Laura Place—unless it be some dark and cumbersome mahogany pieces, almost as ancient as herself, that the dowager had imported from Sotherton. She must fear, and rightly, that her usurper would make a bonfire of them! The Crawfords were admitted to the presence of the ladies, to find their eagerness to pay their respects had been anticipated by the superior eagerness of Miss Thorpe. Nothing could equal Isabella’s surprize at encountering her friends, unless it was her pleasure at the event.

If Mary anticipated that the admixture of an Isabella with her plans might render her heroic labour more Herculean yet, she was in no whit deterred. The topic was broached; the handsome volumes produced. The old lady took up the first, examined it—the suspense was awful. So must a gambler feel, who has staked all on red, as he watches the ball begin its descent on the wheel! So must a captain of the line feel, as the enemy vessels draw in, closer, closer! Mrs. Rushworth—in common with many elderly widows, displaced from their former sphere of influence to the backwaters of a provincial spa—liked to have an opinion on everything, and was not so milk-spirited as to let ignorance stand in her way. She retained, in addition, enough vanity to disdain to don her spectacles in the presence of so pleasant a young gentleman, however inferior in height, appearance, and consequence to her own dear James—for she too had had her share of beauty in her day, and disliked the reminder that her day was no more.

‘ _The Monk_ ,’ she pronounced, at length, ‘is a most edifying work, well suited to the education of a young lady.’ She handed the book to Isabella, who happened to be placed nearest. ‘You should read it, Miss Thorpe! Alas, we are not at Sotherton! I should lend you a copy at once. The family library is very extensive. The late Mr. Rushworth was devoted to its upkeep.’

‘Your kindness is beyond anything, ma’am,’ said Isabella. ‘But I have already had the opportunity to read _The Monk_ , and to be sure, it could not be more edifying if it had been written by a bishop.’

‘I believe Mr. Lewis to be a member of parliament, ma’am,’ was Henry’s contribution; the love of a joke superseded in him many tastes that should perhaps have stood higher.

‘That would explain it,’ said Isabella. ‘I recalled it was something of that sort. A member of parliament! Really!’

To Fanny was left nothing but to express her gratitude, a matter that could hardly give her a moment’s trouble, so many years of practice had she to perfect it; and so the thing passed off as neatly as if some fairy godmother should have taken a hand. A night of reflection had allowed Henry to profit from his failure to coax more than a word or two from his beloved in the Pump-room; and he addressed himself not to her, but to Mrs. Rushworth, making himself agreeable as only he knew how. That lady was first implored for news of her son’s improvements at Sotherton. Had Mr. Repton been engaged? Her dear James was returned from Brighton with his bride, and had taken up residence at Wimpole Street for the winter season. There could be no thought of improvements till the spring. These most interesting of intelligences elicited, talked over, exhausted, Henry next began to petition for Miss Price to be allowed her habitual daily exercise. The day was so mild! The snow had quite vanished! Sydney Gardens were so close! Miss Price had never seen them! The task barely merited so skilled a dragon-tamer as Henry Crawford. Mrs. Rushworth perceived a young lady, well spoken, modestly attired, suitably deferential, the niece and ward of a baronet; she had somehow failed quite to grasp the chasm that yawned between Fanny and her cousins. And why should she grasp it? With her only son locked safe in Hymen’s bosom, she need guard against adventuresses no longer! Her leave was soon granted; Fanny’s quiet assent must, and did, follow; and Henry’s reward, for the draconic labours of a very few minutes, was the arm of that fairest and most worthy of damsels.

As their party traced the length of Pulteney Street to the gardens, Mary, in her turn, received from her dear friend all those congratulations due to her daring feat. ‘“A most edifying work, well suited to the education of a young lady!”’ Isabella gave way to laughter. ‘That you should actually have the nerve to sit there, prim as anything, while that pompous prig peered down her nose at it! I could not believe it! It is beyond anything amusing! I cannot stop thinking of it! Have you ever happened to visit Sotherton? Is it very fine? Have you met Mr. Rushworth? Is he handsome?’

Mary answered her friend’s civil enquiries, and owned that Mr. Rushworth had all the handsomeness that twelve thousand a year could lend a gentleman.

‘Twelve thousand a year!’ Isabella seemed much struck. ‘What a pity he should be married!’

‘The pity is apt to fall to Maria Rushworth. I should be ashamed to sit across the table from such an husband, were that table grand enough to seat a regiment.’ To her credit, Mary had not given Mr. Rushworth and his twelve thousands more than, oh, a quarter hour’s consideration, not even when Maria had looked set to bolt from his stall, towards the pleasanter pastures of Everingham. With all her lively qualities, equality in marriage was not to be hoped for, love a thing little to be looked for; but Mary could never bring herself to accept a man whom she could so little respect—the Hill Street School of Matrimony had taught her all the dangers of _that_.

‘Really!’ cried Isabella. ‘As bad as that! Is it not a crying shame that the ugly boors should have all the thousands, and the handsome, pleasant gentlemen should have none? If the world were mine to order, I should certainly put a stop to it at once.’

Mary could only agree. If it crossed her mind that an exception was holding open the gate to the gardens just ahead of them, she did not name him. Her silence on the point was strange. Surely she must desire to win her dear, dear Isabella as a sister? Such felicity, for her brother to be united to one so nearly like herself! But still she held her tongue.

They entered the gardens; and a fuller unfolding of Isabella’s opinions on how the world should be governed, must therefore be denied her friend by all those essential raptures over vegetal beauties, that neither could have happened to observe upon their earlier visits. ‘I do love a garden above anything! Don’t you, my dearest Mary? We may enjoy such an agreeable coze, without fear of any gentleman overhearing. How pleasant it is to stroll about in the sunshine! I am sure I could do so all day long, without ever feeling in the least fatigued!’

But Isabella’s pleasure in rambling was soon to be spoiled. She seemed to slip, though on what it could not be said. Perhaps the snow had not quite all vanished? Perhaps a little mud might have strayed onto the smooth gravel paths? It was a mystery not easy of solution. Her cry of alarm brought the gentleman to her side in a moment. What had happened? Did her ankle pain her? Did she wish to return to her lodgings? Could he call her a chair? Brave Isabella would not break up their party. If she could just be helped to a bench! The others must walk on without her. Miss Price must not give up her exercise! She would be well in a moment. And when their promenade was resumed, our heroine found herself allotted to a fresh confidante; Isabella and her brother walked off faster than Fanny’s timid steps could follow—so fortunate, that the ankle be not gravely injured!—and the sinuousness of the path soon lost them to view.

Mary’s astonishment at these events could not be great; but that Fanny should accept them quite so meekly—that did surprize. ‘You are such a gentle creature, Miss Price!’ she marvelled. ‘To yield your place so readily to your rival.’

‘Miss Thorpe is most kind.’ The placid tone of Fanny’s reply shewed all her true gentleness of spirit. She seemed to feel it not at all!

‘ _Kind_? I should give it another word.’

‘Kind to relieve my distress so.’ This time Fanny’s words were pronounced so quietly, as to require her companion to incline her head to make them out, till their bonnets almost kissed.

‘I am sure _that_ was Miss Thorpe’s motive.’ But Mary was too well bred openly to abuse one friend to another. ‘Well, we shall see if I cannot shew Sydney Gardens _quite_ as well as my dear brother! What would you see? There is a ruined castle, a ravine with a waterfall, some very pretty Oriental bridges—though they be but over a canal—and all the usual in lawns, shrubberies, trees and arbours that one might find anywhere. Oh, and there is a maze, though I cannot recommend it. A child could not get lost in it, except on purpose.’

Her companion disdained the inferior attractions of the maze, with all the eloquence with which a shake of her head might be imbued; she was induced, by patient repetition of the enquiry, to express a preference for ‘whatever is most natural—least artificial,’ which Mary was pleased to gratify by striking a narrow side-path that wound through trees, then descended to a sunken and secluded grotto, where threads of ivy weaved their ragged curtain, and chill water dripped and trickled down the rocks, to collect in a still black pool fringed with moss. It was a most dank and gloomy place, exactly suited for drownings, ravishments, unholy rituals, ghosts, and all things ghastly—yet for all her nocturnal reading, Mary had no notion of drowning her rival heroine; she had chosen the spot only because its retired location yielded no views over the rest of the pleasure gardens, and she recalled that her brother deemed it too damp for love-making.

‘There!’ she said. ‘Is this not picturesque? In spring there are ferns, but we shall have to content ourselves with ivy. Are you fatigued? Shall we rest here a while? The seat is a little damp, but we shall dare it if you like.’

Fanny owned herself somewhat fatigued; she would be glad to sit down. ‘What is a little damp when there are such beauties to be seen!’

‘Next you will be saying that you love a garden above anything,’ observed Mary, who loved a garden exactly as much as was fashionable, saw no beauties beyond her fair companion, and was already calculating the depredations of the damp on the delicate figured muslin of her gown.

‘Not above anything, no.’ Mansfield had failed to teach Fanny the heroic art of hyperbole. ‘But it is pleasing to find an echo of the beauties of nature so near at hand, in all the bustle of town.’

‘You prefer the country to the town, I collect? Are Bath’s attractions so mean, that you are missing Mansfield already?’

‘Oh, _yes_!’ breathed Fanny; and such a look of longing stole across her features, that her sincerity could not be doubted—not even by so practised a doubter as Mary.

Could it be that all her coyness towards dear Henry’s attractions was equally sincere? How could that be? His income was solid; his estate unencumbered—Everingham’s shrubberies were quite the equal of anywhere!—his person tolerable, only a _very_ little short; his address good; his manners excellent; his habits no worse than any man’s; his passion heartfelt—if such a calcified organ as his _could_ feel. And a thought, an horrid thought, crept into her mind—might Fanny have left her own tender little heart behind at Mansfield Park? Mary put the options under fevered review. Fanny never dined out, save at the Parsonage; unless there was some handsome curate, or agent, or even tenant farmer, whom Mary had chanced not to meet—or Fanny were nursing an adulterous passion for Dr. Grant!—no, if her heart were given, it must be to one of the Bertrams. Tom Bertram? _Edmund?_ Could Fanny Price be in love with Edmund Bertram? _No!_ It could not be! But the notion, once called into being, would not be banished. It was as if Mary had been gifted with a mystical skill that allowed her to dissolve herself into smoke, and penetrate Fanny’s skull, and insinuate herself into her mind, and read her very thoughts! _She_ would see naught lacking in some few paltry hundreds a year. _She_ could have no objection to a man in orders. _She_ would be happy to wear her virtue seven days a week. Fanny Price in love with Edmund Bertram! In love, all this time! And in secret! _Well!_ So her rival heroine was a rival indeed! Poor Fanny! How she must have suffered!

Had Fanny noticed her abstraction? No, she was equally abstracted herself, gazing into the pool as if it were Matilda’s magic mirror, and Edmund’s handsome countenance might be conjured from her longing in its murky depths. ‘You must anticipate an excellent correspondent in Lady Bertram,’ Mary began. ‘She will miss her dear Miss Price sorely. Her letters must be a solace whenever you are from Mansfield.’ And so by slow diligent degrees—like the implacable owl sweeping back and forth in its hunt for a mouse—did she work the conversation round to the fatal name. If any doubt remained, the blush that the magic word ‘Edmund’ called forth on Fanny’s cheeks must dismiss it.

How came she never to remark it before? She had been blind, contemptibly blind! She who prided herself on discerning all her friends’ inmost secrets; piqued herself on discovering romantic inclinations, before the very people who were feeling them! It must account for Sir Thomas having packed Fanny off to Bath, before his younger son’s return—to be less quick in her perceptions than Sir Thomas! _That_ was a hit not readily to be recovered from. The pricks of jealousy she did not feel; she was perfectly serene—she really was. Edmund might not care enough for _her_ to give up his vocation; but he noticed poor Fanny only as a sister—which is to say, not at all. One circumstance, and only one, did cause her vexation—that wretched novel! Mary had thought, insofar as she had thought at all, to awaken Fanny’s tender passions to her brother’s charms; instead, she was like to rouse them for his rival!

The gift so given—so endorsed—could not be un-given. Nothing would do—once Isabella and Henry had been discovered (they were eating ices on the coffee-house terrace, and wondering where Fanny and Mary might have got to); once Fanny had been restored to No. 14—nothing would do, but that Mary should lay out more of her shillings on another copy of _The Monk_! She must read it anew that night, blushing and trembling as she read—marking how the exquisite sensibility of her young friend might respond to each indelicate passage—hoping and dreading on every page that Fanny might throw it on the fire! Edmund was quite forgotten! Most fervently did Mary wish that she might dissolve in smoke again, and drift across the flags of Laura Place, and up the limestone wall of No. 14, and in through Fanny’s bed-chamber window, like a vampyre!

Unfortunately for our heroine, Dr. Polidori was still at school. But every author is a sort of vampyre, and _I_ can breach the walls of Fanny’s bed-chamber; _I_ can leech the thoughts from her head, and spread them out upon the page for all to see! Fanny was not one to shirk her allotted portion of reading. Few novels, and fewer romances, had ever come her way, that she scarcely knew what to expect; but a diligent perusal of the first fifty pages of Mr. Lewis’s shocking work was enough to make her wonder at her friend’s taste, and to doubt the propriety of reading the remainder. _She_ had not forgotten Edmund, and she considered applying to her usual preceptor; but she had never once received a letter from her cousin, and in her doubting state, began to doubt the propriety of writing to him. Application to Sir Thomas was impossible, Lady Bertram worthless, Aunt Norris not to be imagined—and Mrs. Rushworth had already approved it! Fanny turned another page, and another—and before she knew it, her candle was quenched, sunlight was streaming through the shutters, and the maid was bringing her cup of chocolate! She had spent the night in Spain! The book must have a spell on it, that once begun it could not be put down! It was with trembling fingers that Fanny concealed the volume beneath her pillow—trembling fingers, and a disordered mind. She could not un-read it. The sensations it had provoked in her breast could not be forgotten. She was inexorably reminded of Eve tasting the forbidden fruit—but she had not known it was forbidden! Such was Mary’s gift to her—and if she cast Mary as the serpent, was she so far in error?

 


	3. Chapter 3

Bitterly did Mary come to regret her gift to Fanny. It had been but a moment’s idle malice; now she wished it undone from her heart. Her Pleasure must bear a heavy Price—if the girl had been tongue-tied before, now her tongue seemed severed from her mouth; if she had shrunk and blushed, now she recoiled as if she had stepped on an adder. Henry, too, felt the sting. He was generous with his cares, and delighted to share them with his sister. ‘That cursed novel of yours has undone all my efforts!’ was become his daily refrain. In vain did sister and brother suggest the most unexceptionable of entertainments—a walk around Beechen Cliff, a picnic by the Avon, a drive to Lansdown Hill, a harp recital in the Octagon, a box at the Theatre Royal—Fanny found some excuse to decline; or if obliged by Mrs. Rushworth’s officious kindness to enjoy herself, said nothing that some waxen automaton propelled by clockwork might not. It was as if all her spirit had been drained from her body, and trapped within the pages of that blasted book!

The weeks of winter wore away, and a new anxiety grew like a cancer in Mary’s breast—an anxiety whose name was Isabella. Mary had no solicitude for her brother—that butterfly was far too wary to be netted! But Isabella had turned from Mary, to strike up a most unlikely intimacy with gentle Fanny. It was as if the cat should befriend the mouse, and spend its days collecting feathers for its nest! All those hours that Isabella could save from Henry, she invested at Mrs. Rushworth’s. Her devotion to her new friend was unequalled—their heads were always together; their voices always hushed when Mary approached. Thus was the villain unmasked! But what could be her wicked plan?

If Mary had been a man, and a hero, she might have duelled the villain—if she had been a _proper_ heroine, she might have swooned. Alas, that she had never learnt! Letter writing might not be as heroic as sword-fighting, or swooning, but that most fearsome of weapons in the heroine’s armoury—gossip—must always be worth the sacrifice; and so Mary dashed off a note of congratulation to the new Mrs. Tilney, concluding with the mendacious thought that ‘Isabella Thorpe begs to be remembered to her dear friend.’ She next recalled the Gloucestershire branch of the Fraser family—did they not live near Northanger Abbey?—and she wrote to implore her friend Janet’s aid. Her mustard seeds did not fall upon stony ground. Mrs. Tilney was delighted to make her acquaintance, but prayed ‘you w’d not mention Miss Thorpe again—the name was never repeated among them, on account of her having cruelly jilted my brother James last March.’ A still more interesting intelligence was received from Janet’s cousin, Lady Anne Fraser, who had it from her neighbour Mrs. Stokeham, whose housekeeper’s niece was a chambermaid at the Abbey—

> A fortune-hunting Miss Nobody staid at the Abbey last Easter with _one_ of the Tilney sons— _which_ she c’d not immediately recall. The poor Genl. was in _quite_ the frenzy when he caught them,  & threw the naughty Puss out on her ear! There might have been a Child, but Mrs. S. c’d give no very precise information.

A child! _Well!_ Easter had fallen early last year, she thought; she counted on her fingers—if Isabella had been brought to bed last December, she was looking remarkably well on it. It did not, after all, seem very likely; and after careful consultation of a calendar, Mary had to give up the promising notion altogether.

And so did January, February, March tiptoe past, the change of season hard to discern in Bath’s stony streets. Green buds had begun to clothe the nakedness of Sydney Gardens’ trees, when the year’s advance wrought more interesting alterations to the scene—the Grants arrived in the spa town, and the Thorpes removed from it. Isabella’s wise investment was now repaid with interest—Mrs. Rushworth invited her to stay at Laura Place with her friend till Easter, when she too would remove to London. Isabella’s gratitude was beyond words—she could not stop speaking of it. Mary wondered that Mrs. Rushworth should tolerate such flummery; but that lady had then been near five months in Bath, and anybody who has ever staid there half so long would not wonder for a minute. Mrs. Rushworth was truly glad to have secured the services of so pretty a chatterbox, who could listen to her talk of Sotherton and her dear James without a yawn—not that Fanny ever yawned; but she was limited in her raptures over Mr. Rushworth, by all the mischance of having met him. That same mischance was soon to befall Isabella, and we may see how she bore up under it—for, a few days before Easter, Mr. Rushworth joined his mother in Bath.

The gentleman came alone, and big with news—he had bought an handsome new coach! The very latest design! Smooth as silk! Smoother! No longer would his poor mother be jolted half to death by the springs of the old one! Oh, and by the by, had they heard? Tom Bertram just now lay dangerously ill at Mansfield! Mary had _not_ heard, and as the knot of Mr. Rushworth’s narrative was teased straight (tangled as it was with many side-loops on the custom mouldings, capacious trunk, brighter-than-day lamps, and other perfections of his new vehicle)—as it was gradually conveyed upon her that Mr. Bertram’s illness was not new—was several weeks old—had passed its climax—the fever quite gone—the invalid mending—her anxiety was swiftly succeeded by relief, and then by anger. _Fanny_ must long have had the news from Lady Bertram, who was indeed an assiduous correspondent, and a fond enough mother to pen as many pages on the dangerous fever of her eldest son, as any mother might. Yet Fanny had not _once_ , in all those weeks, troubled to confide it in Mary!

When as much had been made of poor Mr. Bertram, as the demands of the new carriage would allow, Henry must enquire as to whether the new Mrs. Rushworth accompanied her husband on his filial visit. No—not at present—Maria staid behind in London, with her sister. She was so popular! Such a host of engagements! She could not be spared! All that was civil about Maria’s company being missed in Bath was said—and Julia’s lesser claims were not quite forgotten—and so the visit ended.

‘So Rushworth has mislaid his wife already,’ was Henry’s comment, when the Grants had likewise departed their lodgings, to try what the vapour baths could do for Dr. Grant’s gout. ‘I cannot say it surprizes me.’

‘I dare say both Bertram sisters are busy alleviating their anxieties over their brother’s illness with all the gaieties of town,’ said Mary. ‘I wonder that Julia, at least, does not return to Mansfield to nurse her brother.’

‘Now, Mary, don’t come all strait-laced!’ And, with no more ceremony than if she were still a little girl, he pinched his sister’s cheek. ‘You know I rely on you for my amusement.’

‘If you lay sick at Everingham, would you want your sister to gad about town, her head full of naught but self-pleasure?’

‘I would not want you to wear such a long face! Don’t say you are cut up that Tom Bertram is like not to die! I thought you had entirely given up his brother.’

‘I have,’ Mary declared—and was surprized to find it the truth. It was many weeks since she had pounced on the morning post, lest it should contain some letter full of apologies, explanations, offers from the younger Mr. Bertram, that absolutely demanded _not_ be read as early as possible; many weeks since she had sighed over all those evils attendant on handsome younger sons, without the courtesy to boast a private income; many weeks since she had joked about consumption, hunting accidents, poison, and all the other ways in which an inconvenient elder brother might be disposed of! But, oh, _what_ had she said in front of Fanny? Could that paragon of honesty believe that Mary wished Tom Bertram dead, so she might marry a Sir Edmund-in-waiting? What a danger there is in words, where one party means them, and the other does not! Words become swords, and wound unintentionally. If bloodshed is to be averted, Fanny must become an acolyte of the mysteries of humour, and Mary must learn to speak solemnly on solemn subjects.

Now Mr. Rushworth was not some unsteady young man, that his enthusiasm for his new carriage should prove the office of but a single day. Nothing would serve—when his visit was returned on the morrow—save that his friends should join him in his pleasure; and as that pleasure might most expediently be obtained by travelling in the object of all his enthusiasm, he pressed for some expedition—anywhere might serve, as long as it was twenty miles or more from Bath. The Crawfords were not, in general, averse to pleasure, wheresoe’er it might be found. Were Mr. Bertram’s life still to hang in the balance, they might have drawn back from such a scheme; but a mere convalescence, with no danger attached, can never exert the same fascination. Isabella was in extasies, and even Fanny understood what was owed to her hostess, in sacrifice to her son’s golden calf. Only the destination remained to be fixed.

Mr. Rushworth held out for his twenty miles—anything less would be an insult to the new vehicle’s magnificence. The too-proximal claims of Longleat and Blaise Castle were dismissed, Dyrham Park derided. Mr. Rushworth had heard Stourhead’s gardens praised; but the distance—it must be four-and-twenty miles!—was felt to be excessive, and besides the house was nothing! The gardens so old fashioned, so in need of Mr. Repton’s touch! Mr. Rushworth made his apologies. It must have been some other place that had been meant. He was trying to bring to mind the name, when Isabella introduced the startling notion of Wookey Hole. What a bold idea! To celebrate spring’s advent _en plein air_ , amidst all the glories of nature untrammell’d! The approbation was near universal. Even Fanny ventured to add her quiet voice to the chorus; her cousin Edmund numbered among those multitudes to have praised the picturesque landscapes around Cheddar Gorge. Mrs. Rushworth alone despised the natural beauties of a Wookey Hole, or a Cheddar Gorge; _she_ was for Wells, and the mere constructed splendours of its cathedral. That edifice was readily owned to be one of the finest of its kind in England, if not _the_ finest—but its charms (to all save Fanny) were almost as stale as the Pump-room’s.

The disputations seemed like to outlast the visit, when Henry thought to petition their hosts for a map and road-book. These being brought, he undertook an impartial review of the evidence—which seemed to consist as much in scrutiny of the young ladies’ lineaments, as any examination of those lifeless lines inscribed upon the page. ‘I am very much afraid, ma’am,’ his awful judgement commenced, ‘Wells falls short by as much as a mile. Wookey Hole is twenty miles to the inch.’

‘Wookey Hole it is, then!’ cried the decisive Mr. Rushworth.

Mary saw all the tide of chagrin rush in over his mother’s features, at her decided preference being so disregarded; Fanny observed it too, she was sure. There went that little flush, that little dip of her head! ‘Let me see that map, brother,’ she said. ‘Is not Wookey Hole a mere mile or two from Wells? I don’t care to take my chance at some nameless village inn, where the yokels, like as not, will serve us bread and cheese and beer, and naught besides! Let us all proceed to Wells, and dine in comfort at the Swan—and those that will, may go onwards to the cavern.’ It was not a form of heroism to which the lady was accustomed, but it had its sweet rewards in Mrs. Rushworth’s smiles, and a flash of Fanny’s soft shy eyes.

‘A capital plan,’ said Isabella. ‘It is just what I was about to propose.’

The next fine day was settled upon for the expedition; and after such a declaration, it was only to be expected that rain, and thunder, and high winds should follow, day after day, till the fear arose that Mr. Rushworth might have to put off his return to London with his mother! Happily for all the impatient feelings of his five-month bride—to whom the separation must have seemed most cruel—the final day of his projected stay dawned as clear as anybody could wish; and no mishap intervened to prevent the party from setting out, straight after an early breakfast—no one succumbed to sudden illness; no rider galloped up to 14, Laura Place, his horse quite spent, to deliver an express urging Mr. Rushworth’s return to Wimpole Street that very instant; no one even overslept!

Mr. Rushworth had averred that his coach would hold eight with ease—or even _nine_ , given how slender were the young ladies!—but in the event only six were tried, for Dr. Grant’s gout could not be persuaded to relent, even by the superior persuasions of Mrs. Rushworth; Mrs. Grant would not stir without her husband; and Henry would not sit inside another man’s conveyance, however handsome, when the weather was fine enough to ride. It was perhaps fortunate—Mary and Fanny were each quite as slender as anybody might wish, but Isabella could only be called slender by comparison with Mrs. Rushworth; and the latter’s companion, a Mrs. Glenn—the lady whose happy cold had conjured Fanny’s presence in Bath—could not rightly be called it even then. The natural arrangement, with the gentleman next to his mother and her companion, was obliged to give way to his sitting beside one of the young ladies; and Isabella selflessly secured that seat to herself. No doubt her thought was to save her dear Fanny from the trouble of responding to his conversation; but such thoughtfulness was wasted—Mr. Rushworth was born to speak at hustings—no one confined with him could fail to gain all the benefit of his opinions.

The gentleman extracted his watch—an operation not without inconvenience to poor Isabella—as the carriage lurched into motion. ‘We shall be in Wells before eleven,’ he announced. ‘Such a shame we could not go straight to Wookey Hole—just to get the time, ma’am, just to get the time! Twenty miles dead, at ten miles an hour, not a fraction less! Two hours exactly! You must not mind her rattling over the cobbles a bit. Smooth as silk she goes, just as soon as the proper road is reached. Smooth as silk!’

The word of a gentleman, and one in receipt of twelve thousand a year, could not be doubted—I fear the road to Wells must be far from proper! So enriched, by the recent rainfall, was its usual store of potholes, that it seemed to have but narrowly survived the smallpox; and when they baited the horses at the Old Down Inn, the coach—from the mud splashes marring its scarlet paintwork—seemed not to have escaped its share of the contagion. The young ladies were glad to descend, despite the dirt, and accept all the fortification that a glass of wine might afford. For the most desperate portion of their route yet remained—if any part of England should be infested with banditti, it must be the abrupt slopes and thickly wooded valleys, the awful crags, and chasms, and concealed caverns, of the Mendip Hills! Such were the dangers that our travellers must brave—not forgetting the superadded risk from their conveyance bearing one of a pair of sundered lovers! The swift speed of Mr. Rushworth’s steeds must be responsible for their safe deliverance, unless it was the fierce look of his postilions; for they clattered into the inn-yard of the Swan, as the cathedral clock struck half past twelve, without hearing so much as a cry of challenge, or one pistol discharged!

 


	4. Chapter 4

I shall not sport with the patience of my readers, eager to be initiated into the mysteries of Wookey Hole, by devoting many lines to the Swan Inn, nor even to the Cathedral of St. Andrew. All that need be said of the latter, is that it boasts no crypt! Now do you know everything of substance! Such a paltry place can never be the proper haunt of heroines—and when I let slip that Wookey Hole has a witch in residence, you will know just what to expect!

Picture now the scene—the gentleman restored to his fiery chariot, three fair nymphs attending, no old crone to chaperone! Mr. Rushworth must have taken too much wine with his dinner; and Mary winced at all those clumsy sallies that drew attention to his fortunate situation—he was no adept of the light, meaningless flirtation that her brother so excelled in! How had Miss Bertram borne with that boor’s courtship? Mary could see how his boldness was offending all of Fanny’s country-reared notions of propriety—such nice notions would not last _one_ London ball! But Fanny had never been in London; and Mary was beginning to comprehend quite how cruelly would so reserved, so proper a girl suffer, from the manners of the metropolis. Henry spent fully half the year there—could no more give it up, than give up breathing! How would she ever manage as his wife?

Isabella’s bravery in drawing Mr. Rushworth’s fire seemed only to compound Fanny’s unease, at the free manners of her friend; and Mary hit upon the scheme of reading from a treatise on their destination, that Mrs. Rushworth—who set great store by books, and was never so happy as admiring all the handsome bindings lining the shelves of Sotherton’s library—had been so generous as to contribute to the young people’s amusement. Mary’s relation of the cavern’s dimensions—second only to Poole in Derbyshire—and of the many thousands of gallons that flowed down the Somerset Styx each minute, earned yawns from Isabella—such a warm day, so stuffy!—and a slight, a very slight, upward inclination of Fanny’s bonnet. Mary was encouraged to persevere. ‘I shall spare us Dr. Bury’s opinions on Roman lead mining,’ she said, turning the page. ‘Paper manufacture—Cheddar cheese—’ and she turned several more. ‘Now, _here_ is something of interest!’

‘I believe your doctor must have _buried_ his light under a bushel,’ was Isabella’s contribution. ‘Can the man have an interesting thought in his head?’

‘It is on the legend of the Witch of Wookey Hole—’

‘Oh, I so love a witch!’ cried Isabella. ‘Don’t you, Fanny?’

She turned to her friend; Fanny could not be persuaded to vouchsafe an opinion, even on so interesting a topic, though her bonnet rose above the horizontal.

‘Let me see it, Mary!’ was Isabella’s next demand, and Mary was quite ready to yield the monograph to her. ‘The good doctor warns his lady readers that the history he is about to relate, is such as to freeze the blood! _We_ will not be so delicate! _We_ who have dared _The Monk_!’ (Mr. Rushworth begged to be acquainted with _The Monk_ ’s particular delights, but his petition was disregarded by all.)

Isabella began to recount the legend, assuming a voice most suitable for her text. The witch was once a beautiful young woman, who was jilted by her lover, a thousand years ago. ‘How little do men alter!’ was Isabella’s editorial. She remained faithful to her lost love, and as the years passed, her beauty withered and faded to nothing. In revenge on lovers everywhere, the witch cursed their romances, it was said, causing many a local girl to jilt her betrothed. ‘Dr. Bury discounts what offence the gentleman might have offered,’ was Isabella’s stout defence of the fickle among her sex. ‘Then does one of the jilted men become a monk! A _monk_! Now does the tale grow interesting! The wicked monk hounds the witch from the village—she takes refuge in the cave—he hunts her down with dogs—she cowers by the underground stream, hoping it will foil the scent—he blesses the water—a single drop splashes her—she is turned to cold stone! It says she remains there to this very day!’

‘It is probably just a stalagmite,’ was the wise opinion of Mr. Rushworth.

‘Very probably!’ Mary had been induced to descend a cavern once before—it might even have been the one named Poole—and had found the experience rather wearisome. ‘Such things are generally, I believe, named for some object that is supposed to have been miraculously petrified. But if the fancied resemblance should ever strike anybody besides the namer—of _that_ miracle, I have never heard.’

‘But there is more,’ pronounced Isabella, in tones most ominous. ‘The witch’s unquiet spirit is said to curse all unfaithful lovers who dare to enter the cave she guards—curse them to turn to cold, cold stone! Is that not the most thrilling thing you have ever heard? _Shall_ we dare it? For my part, I know myself to be the most faithful of beings— _I_ will have not the faintest of fears! No statue of Isabella Thorpe shall grace a damp and dirty cavern!’

Such was the fascination that attended this history, such was the effect of Isabella’s awful question, that—though all conversation was arrested—not one of our conscience-wracked travellers chanced to notice that the carriage had likewise come to a rest, and stood atop a low hill. Banditti must have crept up on them unawares! All were fated to be dragged out and murdered—or _worse_! It was fortunate that Henry just then rode up. He tapped the side-glass with his whip. ‘I said we should hire a lighter vehicle at the Swan, Rushworth! Your coach will not go any farther down this lane—at least, not without sorely scraping the varnish on these hedges. It is as tight trapped as a stopper in a bottle! You will have to consult your coachman, see what is best to be done.’

Mr. Rushworth alighted. The door happening to remain open, some part of the deliberations reached the young ladies left within. (The coach driver, the coward, was urging that the horses be disengaged, and a turn attempted. The coach owner put his weight behind going onwards. Anybody could see the lane was full wide enough! It was all in the driving. He had a mind to take up the reins himself!) And with the words, stole in a fresh spring breeze—a most delicious sensation, to those so long confined. The steps were down—all the delights of meadow and wood beckoned—and with one impulse, one wish for cool and freedom, all descended. A stile tempted their steps; all succumbed. A path wended downwards, its grass dry and inviting; none refused. Their destination was in sight! No greater danger threatened than a few cow pats. So it was that, before the sun declined many degrees farther from its meridian, before the carriage budged an inch in either direction, before the gentlemen noticed their desertion, the ladies gained the gaping maw of Wookey Hole!

The sight could not daunt an heroine, such as ours, who had tasted all the glories of the Peak and the Lakes, who had once toured the gorges and towers of the Italian Dolomites. But Fanny’s naive heart was not so fortified; and from her lips, without conscious volition, burst forth the unfeigned ‘ _Oh!_ ’ of true awe. Mary was pleasantly engaged in observing her face—the extatic gaze, the warm blush—it was as if a person of exquisite musical taste were to hear performed, for the first time, that most sublime of operas Herr Mozart wrote for that most faithless of lovers, Don Giovanni! (Mary, though she would never have owned it, loved music even more than was fashionable.) Most truly did the cold stone wake, to flesh, and breath, and life! Fanny could not have been more enrapt, should the venerable crag before them shiver, and shrug his green-cloaked shoulders, and incline his hoary head, and loudly demand these three fair maidens should brave his dim portal, and dine with him in Hell!

‘Truly,’ breathed Fanny, ‘as the ancients held—in all things of nature there is something of the marvellous.’

‘When robbed of words by beauty, other men’s must suffice,’ said Mary. ‘Or if we despise to ape men, Nature herself might come to our aid. How does the saying go? We must find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, and sermons in stones.’

‘And good in everything!’ completed Fanny, most earnestly.

‘Here is a brook, and trees, and stones enough for an entire year’s worth of sermons—yet I think I could sit through them more patiently than any gentleman parson’s words.’ And if Mary added privately, that she was sure she would rather listen to a _stone_ , than a certain Reverend, I shall not censure her. Jilting is a bad enough case after betrothal; but to be jilted _before_ being asked—now that is hard indeed!

‘But who can think of sermons when out in the open air!’ cried Isabella. ‘ _I_ never can, to be sure! Are not nature’s beauties infinitely superior to anything to be found in town? So do I always think. Now, is your courage high, my friends? I am sure mine is. Let us dare the entry! Or would it be more prudent to wait for the gentlemen? Perhaps we ought. Wherever can they have got to?’ The lanterns having been left behind in the coach, prudence was the victor; and the gentlemen were not far behind the wish for them.

Isabella’s repetition of her enquiry, left Henry incredulous. ‘What has courage to do with anything? We are not savages, to fear a little darkness.’ And when the tale of the witch’s curse was recapitulated for his instruction, he so far failed to enter into the spirit of the company, that a blunt ‘What a lot of twiddle-twaddle!’ was his response! ‘If every unfaithful lover who ever entered the cave were turned to stone,’ he claimed, ‘the place would so resemble Madame Tussaud’s wax collection, that we should scarce squeeze in.’

‘My brother thinks himself civilized, and eschews the Gothic,’ said Mary. ‘It is his only fault!’ And then—lest Fanny should mistake her intent—she added, with a smile, ‘But a fault so grave as that, must make up for a thousand perfections!’ And all smiled, even Fanny.

Henry, as if to prove his point, lost no more time in venturing into the awful dimness of the subterranean labyrinth. Most dauntless of explorers! So must Columbus have felt, setting sail on unknown waters! And in more recent times, so must Signori Paccard and Balmat have felt, plunging their heavy boots into Mont Blanc’s virgin glaciers! I can report, by the light of the lantern he carried, that the gentleman did not turn to stone, at least not within the first forty or fifty feet—but whether this stood testimony to his unswerving fidelity to Fanny, or had some other cause, is left to the reader’s judgement. His footsteps receded; his light wavered, dimmed, disappeared; yet all the four remaining hung back—there seemed to be some inexplicable reluctance to follow.

Mary had a happy thought. ‘The curse,’ she observed, ‘if one there is, most probably protects only the witch’s chamber itself.’

Mr. Rushworth gestured towards the mouth of the cavern. ‘Is this not it?’ he enquired.

Isabella consulted the good Dr. Bury, and was able to reassure the gentleman that a long passageway must first be negotiated, before the fatal chamber could be achieved; and in thrilling accents, she revealed, ‘Hell’s Ladder is its name! Dare we descend?’

Such a challenge could not be resisted; and so, one by one, all entered the hill. What horrid sensations must have coursed through their breasts! What palpitations must have afflicted their hearts! But when their eyes accustomed themselves to such an abrupt accession of gloom, their tongues might rightly have disputed the degree to which truth lay in names. The rock passage, though low enough, and narrow enough, was quite dry (the stream must find its egress by some other route) and not so steep as to be remarkable; it seemed no more to deserve castigation as hellish than the service passages of such an age-old edifice as Sotherton, and it was only a very little darker—though any Sotherton servant who left such obstructions on the stairs, as our party found themselves negotiating, would soon receive Mrs. Rushworth’s congé! Not all of the obstructions, I might add, were of a stony nature; the local dairymen stored their great cheeses in the cavern’s cool mouth, and the odour they imparted was not at all conducive to the proper degree of awe. But when darkness drew her black veil over the heavenly window behind, without Henry’s candlelight coming into view before; when the scent of Cheddar receded; _then_ did their courage begin to desert them.

‘We should go back,’ advised their rear-guard, Mr. Rushworth, when a tricky descent—where the roof likewise descended so low, as to require a man of his impressive stature to stoop down almost till his arms brushed the floor—brought their march to a halt. ‘We must have taken some wrong turn.’ It was most cruel that the sole advantage nature had bestowed upon the gentleman, was here become a disadvantage; that must be his excuse.

‘We cannot leave my poor brother to go on alone,’ said Mary, stoutly. ‘And besides, I observed no turns.’ Fanny, emboldened by the least height, and the most acquaintance with service passages amongst the party, at once contributed her mite of quiet agreement. Isabella, trapped between the treacherous testament of memory, and the infallible word of a gentleman of twelve thousand a year, was unusually backward to venture her morsel; and before she was required to injure either her good sense, or Mr. Rushworth’s good opinion, Henry hallooed them.

‘Heyday!’ he cried. ‘Whatever has kept you? The first chamber is no more than a few dozen steps beyond this point. Miss Thorpe, do allow me to assist you in scrambling down these rocks. Take care, it is a little slippery.’ Isabella was quite ready to take the hand extended; and all three ladies were thus helped past the obstacle, Mr. Rushworth being left to scramble for himself. The archway to the witch’s chamber proved a little farther than advertized, the route passing sufficient side-turns as to make Mr. Rushworth’s earlier concern appear quite prescient. ‘Now,’ said Henry, ‘the opening is rather tight—we shall all have to squeeze.’

Isabella held her lantern aloft, like Hecate with her torch; and so armed, she submitted the aperture to a close examination. It was a fearsome sight indeed! The roof hung down, as if in intimate conversation with the floor; and the two sides might have been engaged in a German waltz, so close they leaned. The whole might serve as an illustration of the parable of the rich man threading the needle’s eye. ‘What a mercy dear Mrs. Glenn did not chuse to come,’ was Isabella’s conclusion. ‘The poor lady might have found herself quite as stuck as the carriage!’

Mr. Rushworth seemed quite struck by her observation, whether by the picture of his mother’s companion in such pitiful distress, a fear that he might soon share it, or the reminder of the unhappy fate of his new coach, I cannot tell. ‘I say, Crawford!’ he cried. ‘If you can assist the ladies, had I not better go back to find out how my coachman does? The fellow is quite stupid enough to have gone off to some other hamlet by mistake.’

‘I am always ready to assist members of the fair sex, particularly if they be so fair as these,’ replied Henry, with a smile. ‘You alone can determine the precise degree of imbecility exhibited by any man in your employ.’

‘Well said! It must be me—and I think I _must_ go, if I can be spared. It would spoil all our day’s pleasure, if the coach should have happened to go to the wrong place.’ The ladies found it in their hearts to spare him; and Mr. Rushworth was permitted to exit stage left, pursued by general exhortations not to get lost, without trying whether he might thread the needle.

‘ _Well!_ ’ said Isabella, as soon as his footsteps had ceased to be audible. ‘ _We_ will not be so chicken hearted! Who shall lead us into the breach? _I_ would go first, for I suffer not the slightest trepidation—but I believe both Mary and Fanny have the advantage over me.’

Mary had examined both archway and conscience; she believed both to be clear. If Dr. Bury were no liar, he had penetrated the labyrinth as far as a _fifth_ rocky chamber, and returned to tell his tale; she must, she thought, be smaller and more flexuous than such a last-century bagpipe! And on the latter head—no tokens of esteem had been exchanged, no promises extracted, the gentleman had decamped first—she thought she might be safe there! ‘I am willing to try it,’ she said. ‘If Miss Price does not wish to lead us?’ Fanny disclaiming that honour, with a shake of her head, Mary made the attempt at once. No words could describe the tumult of her emotions; and I shall wait with the three who waited without the portal—if not to the infernal regions, to who knows where? The fair maiden entered—was concealed from view—and then from that fateful cleft issued a most terrible scream, such as to freeze the blood of any who heard it—a clatter, as of a lantern falling—silence. If this narrative were published in parts, such would surely be the final line of a volume!

I am neither so hard hearted, nor so hard headed; and shall reveal without any obfuscation that Henry cried, ‘Good God! What can have happened?’ How thinly lies the patina of civilization upon a man! His polish had quite deserted him! And with not the slightest thought for his coat, he went on to prove how fast a rich man might insinuate himself through the eye of a needle, should his beloved sister’s life be in jeopardy! What Henry would have done, if now provided with a facsimile in limestone of that relative, I know not. But I can reassure any reader as credulous as Mr. Rushworth—and who might have become almost as fond of Mary as was her brother—that the lady in question had merely swooned. I say _merely_ ; but it was the first occasion in all her three-and-twenty years, that she had shewn such exquisite sensibility—now might she be acknowledged as an heroine indeed!

Fanny was almost as quick to brave the awful cavern as the gentleman. No mean adept of the swooning art herself, she proved well prepared for the eventuality in her fellows; and was swift to administer the usual remedies—hartshorn to the nostrils, Hungary water to the temples—to the prostrated lady. Though Isabella’s own exquisite sensibility could not allow of any nursing, she yet contributed such invaluable commentary as ‘Oh, what if she should die!’ Under such tender care, Mary’s robust health could not long be overborne by so infantile a sensibility; and she soon felt equal to explaining the source of so useful a lesson, as she had just received.

‘Bats!’ she cried. ‘Hundreds—thousands—countless swarms of the horrid things! One brushed my face— _faugh!_ ’ And the remembrance of the event made her sink back into her brother’s arms. (Anybody who believes bats clever enough to avoid such an encounter, can never have been trapped in a confined space with one of the species.) A little brandy applied to her lips—Henry having made his own preparations for their excursion—soon restored those sanguine spirits habitual in her. ‘I believe I am quite as ready as any woman alive,’ she averred, ‘to confront mice, or spiders, or anything merely creeping. But wings should be confined to the avian species—God made a grave error when He donated them to _rodents_!’ She shuddered. ‘Oh, do not think me blasphemous! I do not dare to question the divine intent—not truly. I am sure, like sin, and disease, and all the hours before nine in the morning, they serve some benign purpose. But it puzzles me to make one out.’

‘I believe the kinds that inhabit England generally consume winged insects,’ said Fanny. Her governess had been something of a naturalist, and her cousin Edmund had encouraged in her a love of all God’s creatures, whether they be creeping, slithering, swimming, flying, or lecturing.

‘Now _that_ is a purpose nobody could dispute!’

‘Are there not bats that drink the blood of men?’ enquired Isabella, whose interest in God’s creatures—in common with very many ladies, some otherwise quite rational—restricted itself to those interesting species, as might fairly be expected to rip out the throat, or gnaw off the leg, or at the very least trample underfoot, anybody fortunate enough to happen upon them.

‘Such may be found in the Americas,’ replied Fanny, seriously. ‘Or so I have read. But not, I think, on English soil.’

Henry, seeing his sister in no little distress of mind from such an hideous notion, introduced, to general approbation, the rival idea that—his sister being sufficiently recovered—they might view those advertized sights of the cavern as were mineral, rather than bestial, in nature. Dr. Bury was again applied to, and their expedition resumed, with Mary resting on her brother’s arm.

‘I think we might fairly challenge the cathedral party,’ she observed, when they had proceeded so far from the entrance, as to make it out no longer. ‘I dare say the entirety of Wells Cathedral might be fitted within this chamber alone.’

Mary’s claim might not, perhaps, bear up beside truth’s unbending rule, but that virtue was not so violently outraged as was commonly seen; and no contradiction being issued—Isabella entered into all her ideals of distance; Henry would not gainsay a lady, though she be his sister; Fanny had but glimpsed the building from afar—so did counterfeit pass as coin. What is undeniable, is that the witch ruled over a great realm; three candles (Mary’s lantern having suffered a more fatal injury than she, from her earlier access of sensibility) could by no means illuminate a space so broad and lofty. Though Mary might think this circumstance lucky—for I might as well warn any reader who shares her aversion, that thousands more of those winged fiends, less flighty than their friends, still clung to the indeterminate roof—it denied to her, and all her party, any better notion of the awful majesty of the witch’s domain, than might be gained by a glimpse here, a flash there.

No sordid witch’s den this! Hers is a realm so perilous and fair, as might inspire any passing poet! Even Mary had to own the place to be something; and _Fanny_ —why Fanny’s rapture looked like to sweep her early off to Heaven! Here, a river, sluggish and silent, appears from stone, to vanish quite as abruptly. Here, a siren sea, so becalmed, so glassy, that its tumbled rocky jewels—though, no doubt, many fathoms drowned—seem close enough to clutch, and beckon the greedy explorer to give his bones into her cold, cold embrace! Here, an alabaster bride, her modesty draped in a veil glistering with diamonds, awaits her groom; and there stands he, a most noble knight, in chainmail gleaming like moonlit silver—their patient wait to be joined as one flesh has endured numberless centuries—both frozen in stone, upon the morn of their nuptials! And here slumbers the evil witch herself, thrice life sized, her belly swollen with her faithless lover’s seed. The sight thrills hearts faithful and faithless alike! Tread soft! Hush your voices! Shield your lights! Will she awake? Will she descend? Will she condemn? Not today!

When all the witch’s treasures had been plundered, the invaluable Dr. Bury again proved his worth (Mrs. Rushworth would be highly gratified); some four or five further chambers remained to be explored—the Hall and Parlour, and a few besides so small and mean as not to merit even so prosaic a name—and Charon’s Chamber! And when the good doctor was so helpful as to inform them that a _ferry_ must be procured, to reach that chamber dedicated to the infernal ferryman—why, then, no other choice might do! Fanny gently suggested that they should perhaps repair to the coach, to reconnoitre with their host; Isabella less gently corrected her. It really was their duty to explore the place quite thoroughly! How else might poor Mr. Rushworth be informed of all those essential sights he had missed! The boat drawn up on the shores of the subterranean sea was no phantasm; a small flat-bottomed punt, operated via a chain, it would admit but two. Fanny owning herself a little tired, and Mary not yet feeling quite equal to journeying over water, howsoever glassy, Isabella volunteered to herself all those inconveniences, and perhaps dangers, that might arise in documenting the hellish chamber.

Henry was next applied to, and was not unwilling to work the ferry. ‘But if I am to play Charon, first must you pay me your coin,’ was his little joke. Isabella was the only one to laugh; she must have left her purse in the coach, but she most readily agreed to render him any other payment he might desire.

‘Take care not to drink the water,’ said Mary. ‘We would not wish you to forget us!’

And with no more delay than to upbraid her for having got her infernal rivers all jumbled up, did the fearless explorers set out upon this most sunless of seas! Mary and Fanny watched the little boat till it could not be made out in the murk, and listened till all sounds of splashing and laughter had ceased. They were left to take what rest they might, with a single lantern and no seat.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Not very many minutes had passed, by any timepiece but Mary’s patience—and certainly too few to expect the explorers’ return—when that lady suggested they too might explore farther. ‘We might not be able to cross the Styx,’ she declared, ‘but I see no reason why we should not view this Hall and Parlour of Dr. Bury’s. It is fortunate that Miss Thorpe left us the book.’

‘But are you quite recuperated?’ enquired Fanny.

‘I thank you, yes.’ Mary proved the extent of her recovery in the vigour of her throwing a pebble, to disturb the water’s most infuriating placidity. ‘Nothing ever wearies me so much as resting.’

‘But should it be safe? To go quite alone?’

‘To venture _quite_ alone might be foolhardy—but where there are two, solitude must be precluded.’

Fanny seemed hardly to know how to answer. ‘But—I mean—without any gentleman!’

‘I am glad you consider my brother essential to your pleasure—but I do not. We shall do very well without him.’

It was an argument that Fanny could not counter; and so they set out. But after all the terrible beauties and beautiful terrors of the Witch’s Chamber, and the fascination exerted by the mere name of Charon, these caverns must be found wanting. The Hall was guarded by quite as narrow an entrance as the witch’s abode, but there was nothing within to recommend it, save a merciful absence of bats; and the Parlour, while larger in dimension, must be even less arousing, owing to the unfortunate evidence—in bottles of a design to proclaim that they could not have attained a decade, still less a century, or a millennium—that pleasure seekers of the most debased kind, mere _tourists_ , had been there before them. To be sure, there seemed to come a most peculiar sound, like the thrilling chords of an organ, announcing some dread event, or entrance; but when nothing ensued—when no witch made flesh pursued them—when the sound did not recur even once, let alone twice (for everybody must know, that the approach of evil is ever heralded by a threefold warning), each began to wonder if she might have imagined it. Mary again consulted the book—its pages were beginning to appear a little crumpled, and even dog-eared—but it made no mention of any under-earthly music, and as the good doctor must be infallible, the subject was dropped.

‘I believe,’ said Mary, ‘if we proceed beneath that arch there, we shall find a further chamber. Dr. Bury writes that it is the “utmost limit of Man’s exploration.” We should be cheating Mr. Rushworth, if we do not visit it.’

In vain did Fanny protest Mr. Rushworth’s probable lack of interest in all matters subterranean; in vain did she point out that Mr. Crawford and Miss Thorpe must surely now be returned, and wondering where they might be—indeed, the latter argument seemed only to strengthen her companion’s resolve! She really thought they should not enter. She would have owned herself too fatigued, but that her indefatigable companion seemed equal to venturing in quite alone! ‘I do not believe it can be achieved without assistance,’ she said, at last. ‘Look how the stream flows through the arch! You will surely wet your shoes, Miss Crawford—perhaps even your gown! What if you should slip?’

But Mary had been engaged in a study of the problem. ‘If we step from stone to stone, I think we may manage it dry-shod, very neatly! What a mercy, we are neither of us tall! We shall hardly have to stoop. The men should have far more difficulty! I shall go first, and hold out my arm for you.’ She at once matched actions to words; and Fanny found herself unable to do anything but grasp the offered hand, and follow resistlessly wherever Mary might lead.

Fanny was quite correct—the river exacted its toll on their shoes, and on the hems of their gowns; but Mary too was vindicated—neither fell in, nor seemed in the least danger of doing so; and indeed, the water, though excessively cold, could only be a few feet deep. The nameless chamber did not, at least to Fanny, seem quite worth the exertion—it was small, and square, and very low—though Mary explored it very energetically, and very minutely, and with very many expressions of interest; and her efforts were soon rewarded by the discovery of another low archway, leading to yet a further chamber—but despite that most irresistible draw of it being innocent of Dr. Bury’s eyes, even _she_ had to own it too deeply drowned to attempt.

Truly was poor Fanny fatigued! Left to occupy herself as she might without the lantern, she at length grew too weary even to follow Mary’s progress any longer; she found herself wondering _quite_ how long Mr. Crawford and Miss Thorpe should be punished for a transgression that she must be quite as alive to, as ever Mary could be; and pondering how the topic of their return might be introduced, without piquing Mary’s interest in some quite ordinary rock formation; and she was proceeding to such strange, sleepy musings as, if this were the bowels of the hill, surely they must be in the appendix—and perhaps the strange music might be the hill burping—when Mary enervated her by exclaiming, in a more animated tone than all her previous exclamations, ‘Now _here_ is something! Look!’

Her find—when rinsed in the river, to remove some of the clay that adhered to it—proved to be a small ring, very worn, of a dark-brown metal that might have been bronze, very tarnished. Its clumsy design, and decayed state lent it all the interest of true antiquity. This could be no curtain-ring! The hand that had borne it belonged to no modern tourist! She might have been mediæval, or even Roman! ‘It seems to be stuck to something,’ said Fanny; and she was about to wonder aloud what that item might be, when the awful answer seemed to strike both her and Mary at just the same moment. That mediæval or Roman lady had left behind not just her ring, but the finger that had worn it! Mary let go the ghastly thing at once, and it sank into the river, and was swiftly swept from sight. But their eyes had been opened. Those sticks that protruded at the water’s edge—like a long-forgotten bundle of kindling, or some long-dead bush, where no green thing ever grew—they must be rib bones! That odd-shaped lump of clay over there, a skull!

And their eyes were opened to another matter, too. The river was no longer sluggish, nor silent—and it was higher, much higher, than it had been when they had entered the little chamber. ‘It is as if the tide were coming in,’ observed Fanny. ‘But how might that be?’

Well might she wonder! The moon holds no sway over rivers, whether above ground or below; but the heavens are not entirely powerless. While they had been below ground, those benignant white clouds of noon had swelled, united, darkened, till they loosed their burden of rain upon the earth. The banditti might have deserted the hills above, for fairer pastures in France, or Spain; but dangers enough—more prosaic than witches or curses, but no less deadly—were there still, for those who voyaged beneath; for all those waters that sprinkled the giant’s green-clad shoulders, fed those secret channels that formed his veins!

The river had risen some two or three feet, and was rising fast. Thigh deep before, perhaps, now it must be breast deep—and soon, very soon, would it rise above their heads! The safe route beneath the archway had quite dissolved away, as if it had been but a dream; there was no escape there! The archway itself might soon be swallowed. They could not get out! Impossible not to think that the owner of both ring and bones must have drowned! But when Mary voiced her fear, Fanny—more familiar with the ways of water—averred that the body would have been carried away downstream. It was more likely to have been buried there. ‘Perhaps the poor soul was sacrificed to the witch?’ It was not a thought to cheer. ‘Or perhaps it might even have been the poor witch herself?’

The water nuzzled at the exposed bones—for bones they truly were, I can assure you—lapped at them, like a mother cat washing a kitten; loosened them, till one after another let go its long hold on its fellows, and was borne off in triumph! Not liking to share their fate, the two ladies scrambled away from the river, without a word, till the roof baffled them, scraping at their bonnets—but here a pocket pointed heavenwards—it would admit two—they clambered over the tumbled rocks beneath to gain a little ledge, narrow indeed, but sufficient for two ladies—two very slender ladies—to perch on. The rock now approached close enough on all sides to touch, and anybody who understood a little of geology might worry about how the cavity had come into being; but geology—beyond a little fashionable collecting of fossils, minerals, stalactites, and the like—was then hardly explained to gentlemen, let alone ladies; and thus even so well informed a lady as Fanny, who knew that bloodsucking bats roamed the Americas, was not picturing the awful churn and swirl of water that had created their present haven. It was probably as well! Knowledge can be quite as frightening as ignorance, and ladies might be right to eschew it.

‘It is like hiding from a giant in the finger of his glove,’ said Mary. ‘I am sure there is some tale about that.’

‘Did not Thor and Loki once spend the night in a giant’s glove?’ Along with the difference between crayons and water-colours, and the names of kings and emperors, a brain so absorptive, so spongy as Fanny’s had soaked up a good deal of material less weighty.

‘That must be what put me in mind of it. Tell me the tale ends well!’

‘I know the giant challenges them to contests, but he cheats—I cannot recall all the details. I believe Thor tries to drain a great drinking horn—oh, the giant has cunningly submerged its terminus in the sea! Thor fails, of course, but so deep does he drink, that he creates the tides—and the giant comes to fear the pair so much that he lets them go.’

‘Let us hope one of us has a prodigious thirst! I had not thought of _swallowing_ the water! What an excellent notion! _I_ am surely Loki, so the task must fall to you!’

‘Oh, I could not!’ cried Fanny, quite as seriously as though Mary could truly be urging such a course.

‘Then must I create fire,’ said Mary, rather less seriously, ‘and boil the water all away to steam. If only we had any dry wood! No, that will not serve—we would most likely be broiled alive! These things are always easier in stories!’ And she paced the length of the ledge—some two or three steps—back and forth (so vigorously that Fanny feared for the safety of the lantern), running her hands all the while over the rock walls, poking and prodding, as if there might be some trap-door, cunningly concealed—if only she could find it, or work out the magic formula to make it open!

Fanny could not but perceive her companion’s agitation. She thought her like a lark in a bell jar, fluttering, fluttering, as the man of science implacably, inexorably, stole all her air. The candle had died too, in the experiment she had been shewn. Bodies burned like flames, consumed the same air. ‘We should put the candle out,’ she said.

Mary had seen that same dread demonstration, and she raised no objection. The deed was done! But the want of light—placed so precariously as they were, betwixt rock and water—robbed her of all the ability to spend her anxiety in motion. It was not the dark, or not the dark alone. No child of the eighteenth century could be entirely unacquainted with the utter blackness of a moonless, starless, country night; but Mary might perhaps have faced it less than most. She had passed most of her years in town; and none had ever denied _her_ a bed-candle, or a fire—all the disadvantages of _her_ upbringing lay elsewhere! But in the dark, constrained to this unnatural stillness, it was impossible not to hear the water below; impossible not to count each laboured breath, and imagine it her last; impossible not to feel the weight of the hill above, pressing, pressing. So still, so calm did Fanny rest; so easily, so quietly did she breathe—as if she sat by Lady Bertram’s sofa, while its lady snored, reading some dull volume of history, careful to turn the pages soundlessly lest the slumberer awake too soon, with nothing greater on her mind than the lateness of the coffee!

If Mary could not move, she must talk! And if she burst forth with, ‘Now, let me tell you a truth about my brother,’ perhaps she wished Fanny to share her present agitation? Or perhaps it was merely that, of all those topics pressing on both their minds, _that_ was the one Mary felt most at ease in forwarding. In any case, such is what she said! Fanny begged her most earnestly to refrain; but the flood of Mary’s confidences, once started, must be quite as relentless as the rising waters; Fanny would have had to stop her ears, to avoid it—yet she did not.

‘You need not fear,’ Mary said, as lightly and brightly as if their strait-waistcoat were a spacious London salon. ‘It is nothing so very scandalous! _Truth_ , I said, not secret. We are like pictures in a gallery, he and I, made for seeing and being seen. No, that will not do—I shall make you believe we are quite shallow! Think rather of—’ and here she searched her memory for something— _anything!_ —as far from this charnel-house that was like to be their tomb as might be—‘of those _cloisonné_ caskets you sometimes see—very beautiful, very costly, brilliant as a diamond, and quite as hard—unless you have the key. Whether there be anything of value inside—that has not been put to the test. Somebody must turn the key and open us up, and try whether we might be entirely hollow! _I_ held out my key to your cousin Edmund, and begged him most prettily to take it, but he did not perceive it. _Henry_ has given his to you, but you will not use it, no matter how he begs.’

Fanny spoke so low, that her words were almost drowned by the water’s rush and swirl. ‘I would not take it,’ she said. ‘He thrust it into my hand.’

‘That was wrong of him. But Henry—and here I let go of metaphor—for all his years, all his confidence, all his experience, _Henry_ has never been in love before. _There_ you have all the experience over him. Have I not guessed right? Do not trouble to answer—I read the truth in your trembling.’

‘It is so cold, pressed against the chill rock like this.’

‘So it is. Why, your hands are quite frozen!’ And she placed Fanny’s hands within her own, and chafed them; and though she did not fail to warm them, by no means did the trembling abate—it rather increased.

Now Fanny had grown something of a carapace of her own; no costly enamelled casket, but an humble filbert shell, that might protect her too-sensitive soul against Aunt Norris’s pincers, and shield her from Mr. Crawford’s skewers. But it could not be equal to so prodigious, so sustained a set of blows as this day had brought, as if Thor himself had come down from Asgard to wield his fearsome hammer. And so did it crack! She snatched back her hands from Mary—and she trembled and shuddered, like a leaf buffeted by a tempest. ‘Let me be!’ she cried, all at once, as if the wind had shaken the words loose from her soul. ‘I will not be a part of your cruel games! You shall never constrain me to marry your brother! Never! No matter what underhand tricks you try! I would rather die!’

Mary could not but be astonished to be so assailed, and by such an assailant! It was as if the timid little mouse, that nested in the lair of the dragon, had learnt to spit fire! ‘You are overwrought,’ she said. ‘It is most natural. Let there be no talk of constraint, or of dying!’ And at those dread words, she could not suppress a shudder of her own. ‘What am I to do? Drug you with illicit poisons, and drag you to a dungeon by your hair, that Henry might ravish your insensate body—and next murder you, no doubt—and most likely dismember you afterwards, like Mr. Lewis’s Ambrosio? It is all very well for a novel, though a little lurid, but I dare say it happens a good deal less often in life—even in our wicked metropolis. Remember this is England! It is the nineteenth century! And Henry is very fond of his comforts, I can tell you, and would not thank me for obliging him to enter some noisome dungeon.’

Or perhaps it was that the mouse had borrowed claws and fangs from the cat? ‘Isabella—Miss Thorpe—has no doubt convinced you that we are not to be trusted, Henry and I,’ she continued. ‘Am I not right? Is that not it?’ There was no response, and no seeing Fanny’s face in this blackness, but she thought that the trembling might have lessened, the tempest lulled by words. ‘What did she say to you? That I am a witch, like Matilda? That I shall use my magical arts to entice you to wed a robber bridegroom? My poor, dear child! Never should I have given you that wretched book! It was wrong, so very wrong, and I have been sorry for it these three months past. There, I have owned my transgression now! You need not forgive me, but I would have you speak—even if it is to rail at me again.’

‘Miss Thorpe—’ Though Mary’s eyes could see nothing, Fanny’s voice gave notice that she had been sobbing, and was sobbing still. ‘She made me believe such terrible things—Oh, how wrong of me! To have such wicked thoughts!’ Fanny’s _naïveté_ is hardly to be wondered at, never having encountered a being who concealed a heart half so false, behind so fair a face.

‘Has it not occurred to you, my sweet child, that—with neither twenty thousand pounds, nor a wealthy uncle to provide for her—Miss Thorpe _must_ marry? And I believe she means to marry my brother, if she can. _You_ may shrink from his claims, but, believe me, _she_ does not. For all we know, they may very well be plighting their troths as we speak!’

‘Oh, I do so hope!’

‘ _I_ do not, for any number of sound reasons—but principally because I am certain that he loves not her, but _you_!’

‘But if I _cannot_ return his love?’

‘If your cousin Edmund—and now I do not boast or preen, but tell the bare, unvarnished truth—if Edmund can fancy himself in love with such a showy butterfly as me, as I believe he once did, he will fancy himself in love with another, soon enough. We are common enough to make a plague of pretty, useless butterflies! And if he ever finds one foolish enough to take him, why then they will flitter-flutter each other miserable, to the end of their days! Never will he see the humble honeybee beneath his nose, who would drip her pure honey into his mouth, and make all his life sweet.’

Fanny trembled, panted, sobbed. ‘Not _Edmund_ —’ she breathed.

And Mary found her arms filled, heard the scrape of straw against her own more modish bonnet, felt soft sweet lips pressed against cheek, and chin, and lips—it could only be Fanny! But _what_ a Fanny! The yearning, panting, trembling Fanny of some fevered dream! What might it mean? Mary placed all her life’s kisses end to end. Her brother, once, when she was eight and he was ten, and she had begged him to initiate her into love’s mysteries. Her uncle, also once, when she was fifteen and he was drunk, and she had begged him to desist— _faugh!_ How like the bat’s caress! A man—no gentleman—her brother had knocked down; another she had never told him of, whom she had thought would—Not Edmund, never Edmund! A kiss from him would form as sacred a vow as all the solemnities of marriage. And what of Fanny? What were her kisses worth? Merely a fear of dying a chaste maid unkiss’d, signifying no more than it had when ten-year-old Henry had pressed his lips to hers? (I can tell you that the appalling boy turned aside, and spat, and wiped his mouth on his coat, and repeated an oath—and it was a very blue one—he had heard the Admiral use of their poor aunt! Let us hope that he has learnt more refinement since, or Isabella is like to be disappointed!)

How could such a perfect creature as Fanny ever prove less constant than her cousin? ‘I must see your face!’ cried Mary. Shaking hands that scarcely seemed her own groped for the lantern; trembling fingers fumbled for her tinder-box. She was forestalled. Fanny’s fingers were nimbler. Never had the tedious process seemed more protracted! But, at length, was a light struck! She eased off Fanny’s bonnet; and took her flushed face between her hands; and threaded her fingers through fine brown hair; and fixed soft light eyes, brimful with brine, with her own dark ones, which (though, of course, _she_ could not see it) sparkled very prettily with her own unshed tears—and what she read there must remain between those two.

What her lips uttered was, ‘My dear, sweet Fanny!’

‘ _Mary!_ ’ was all her return; but those two syllables had ne’er passed Fanny’s lips before—not where their owner might overhear them. And, for some indeterminate time, such further communications as passed between their lips were quiet enough to go unheard, with all the moil and boil of the water.

Such heavenly oblivion could not last. Their earthly peril must intrude. ‘But what can we do?’ burst from Mary. ‘I must be _doing_ , or I shall run mad, and cast us both into the waters like poor Ophelia!’ Now, if _The Monk_ be deemed detrimental to impressionable young ladies, _Hamlet_ must be yet more deadly! Though never have I heard that Ophelia murdered her lover with herself!

‘There remains prayer,’ Fanny replied, with face and voice most solemn. ‘We must pray together, Mary.’

Even in this most desperate of plights, that lady must make of it a joke. ‘Pray for a miracle!’

‘Pray that God be merciful to two poor sinners.’

Mary doubted still; and the efficacy of prayer in protecting heroines must, indeed, be doubtful—so often do they pray, so pure their hearts, so great their afflictions! But to attempt nothing! And a prayer was not _nothing_ , not quite! And so she let Fanny lead them in ‘Our Father,’ and murmured those age-worn words after her, their full meaning piercing her heart, as each trenchant phrase flew from her lips—‘Thy will be done’ is an awful prospect, when that will might be drowning, or suffocation! And when came the ‘Amen,’ tears streamed freely down both their cheeks, to mingle as they embraced. (I cannot endorse such a course of action for any but the _true_ heroine. Such lesser souls as you or I, placed by authorial whim in such a dreadful situation, would be far better served by halloing as loud as we might, and hoping for rude yokels bearing ropes!)

I am ashamed to own that neither of our heroines expected a miracle, not truly. Mary’s faith was of the sort that waxed and waned far swifter than the moon, and was ever at its zenith on a Sunday (the day was Wednesday); Fanny’s was most constant, and most earnest; but she was accustomed to see her heavenly Father in the guise of Sir Thomas, and had all the expectation of her petition being, kindly but firmly, denied. Perhaps the Deity likes, on occasion, to surprize His children—for a miracle was what our two heroines now received!

The form that miracle took was a boat—the very boat that they had earlier watched being swallowed by the murk. The murk had given it up now—though where its earlier cargo might have gone, could not be told. It thudded against the rock wall, with an hideous crack; and nudged along, as if trying to feel its blind way through the arch. Mary was not swift to perceive their prayers as being answered; the Admiral had taught her a suspicion of all things marine, that one or two unfavourable Channel crossings had only heightened; and if great vessels were stigmatized, small ones must be a particular evil! Fanny—with a beloved sailor brother, and a respected sailor father—could not regard them in such a light. One of the most treasured of her trove of early memories was of being rowed out to the _Goliath_ , lying at Spithead, to farewell her father, ordered unexpectedly from port.

‘Help me, Mary!’ she implored. ‘If we might just grasp her painter!’

Mary had not the smallest notion what she meant; but to catch the trailing rope seemed to be to make a start in taming the savage river monster, and between them they managed the operation deftly enough. They baled with their reticules, though they seemed but thimbles, till the vessel might safely admit the lantern; and once that was installed, the ladies must follow. And—with but one long look, one fervent hand clasp—neglecting all those most essential speeches in which every circumstance that had led them to this dreadful juncture must be reviewed, together with any relevant point in their lives hitherto; and blame and virtue must be apportioned in due measure, forgiveness sought and freely given; and poignant farewells be made to all their friends and family, down to the degree, at least, of cousin; before, with many tears and sighs, their care must be committed to the Deity—they embarked.

It could not be an experience to win Mary to the advantages of boat travel. The meagre distance between rock and water in the archway—the eye of a needle, indeed!—enforced the uncomfortable discipline of lying flat on their backs in the bottom, where sufficient icy water still lingered, if not to quench the candle, certainly to damp any ardour that might otherwise have kindled. If only Mary had learnt to paddle! But they had no paddle, no oar, no pole, no steering device of any kind, beyond God’s will—and the water’s.

They emerged from the archway in safety—though their vessel must be sadly scratched, so tightly had the rock embraced it—and entered the broad, familiar shores of the cavern called the Parlour. Both drew in a great breath, though the air here smelled little sweeter. ‘There,’ said Fanny. ‘It is no more difficult than to pass beneath the Post Bridge at high tide. My brother William says—’

But William’s wisdom was destined to go unheard, for the archway was only the first trial! As if the malign beast had heard her words, the little boat veered round sharply, like a horse startled by the mail coach into bolting over a roadside hedge. Their candle illuminated naught but black unending—till they struck something with a great splash that put it out entirely. There could be no stopping, till the water stopped. To sit up was unthinkable, to move impossible. Fanny must be praying; but what those most unheroic syllables were, that Mary was uttering—it is wisest not to enquire too closely. Only consider her upbringing! Mary, at least, had closed her eyes against the dark; and I shall close mine too, and join my prayers to theirs.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Did our fair heroines survive their trials, you ask? Of course they did, for that is what heroines do. It would hardly be a story at all, if either had been swept off to a watery end! (Mr. Shakespeare is very much mistaken!) So can we all open our eyes again—Mary and Fanny, you and I—in some calm side-pool (this one happens to be the property of the paper mill, a quarter of a mile downstream from the Hole), where the raging torrent has abandoned the little boat and its heroic cargo. I shall pass swiftly over the hacking coughs and splutterings, the shiverings, and teeth chatterings, and gooseflesh of the two half-drowned maidens, as not befitting to the dignity of an heroine; and go on to retail their discovery, if not by the hero, by as close as this tale can boast to one. Up now he rides on his black charger, muffled in such a big black greatcoat that his black features can scarcely be distinguished; but our heroines unthinkingly squander all their chance of mistaking him for Death, come to sweep them to an eternal separation—too wrapt up in each other are they, to perceive anything less than an earthquake, and only a rather larger one than seems at all probable in Somerset.

‘Thank Heaven!’ cried he; and instead of sweeping them off to that region, or its infernal counterpart, Henry actually swept them both into an embrace that was a great deal more heartfelt than proper. Before even Fanny could protest, he enquired, ‘But where is Isabella?’

‘Was not she with you?’ was all the answer either could return.

‘She left me to rejoin you! And, unless I be mistaken, in this very boat! I fear I must return to the village at once, to lend whatever assistance I may to the search parties.’

Everything was said by the ladies that could be imagined, as to their shock, sorrow, and wish to be of service—and since Isabella was not entered into the heroic lists, she must be in real and present danger—but Henry would not hear of either doing anything; and so they were deposited like two drenched parcels, in the very village inn that Mary had a week since despised, with no more delay than was occasioned by the unfortunate lack of a lady’s saddle on the sole available horse. Henry was gone. Neither Mr. Rushworth, nor his coach, were to be found. The latter circumstance was particularly perplexing; for anybody might overlook the gentleman, but so grand and colourful a coach as his could hardly go unnoticed in so drab and humble an hamlet.

What a difference might a week make! Mary was now most eager to embrace all those rustic comforts she had earlier spurned; and when the kindly proprietress pronounced that the ‘poor drownded ducks’ must be in need of a piping hot bath, her extasy knew no bounds! How Mrs. Fraser would have stared! What Lady Stornaway might have said! But Mary—bathed, warmed, refreshed—did not think that she had ever been happier than playing at lady’s maid with Fanny’s hair. (She had never had a sister to debase the pleasure.) And I am afraid even Isabella’s danger—her possible demise—could only contribute all the piquancy of ‘such might have been my fate!’ to Mary’s contentment. It was a situation most conducive to the soft exchange of confidences—the eyes of each unable to encounter the other’s, save in the dimmest of glasses—and they soon found themselves indebted for their present good understanding to the offices of Mr. Lewis, whose horrid novel had handed to Fanny a key. What she had found when she dared to set it to the lock, and open up the door to the concealed chamber (or was it a gate in the wall of an old orchard, or even a casket pregnant with an unknown cargo?)—have we not all stood there, one hand still trembling on the lintel, raising shy, curious, expectant eyes to the strange vistas beyond? Suffice to say, she learnt that her long-treasured love for her cousin Edmund was no more, and no less, than her love for her dear brother William; and that love, not hate, might most properly describe her sentiments towards that lady who had opened for her the book of knowledge. And Mary—why Mary had knowledge aplenty, but she hardly knew love at all.

The owl’s hoot had displaced the lark’s song—and, more to the point, our heroines’ clothes had e’en dried (though Fanny’s bonnet was lost, and Mary’s walking dress quite ruined)—before Henry returned to the little inn. Tasked with the melancholy labour of seeking fair Isabella’s corpse on the riverbanks, he had ridden downstream till his horse foundered in marshes; and when dusk had robbed him of vision, he had ridden back to Wells, to acquaint Mrs. Rushworth with the awful fate of her guest. But there Mrs. Rushworth was ahead of him.

‘James Rushworth!’ cried his sister, on receipt of the news. ‘Run off with Isabella Thorpe! Impossible!’ It was fortunate that Henry had thought to direct them all to a secluded corner of the tap-room (the inn having no private parlour); for Mary’s indignation could not be contained—she must share it with every soul in Wookey Hole provided with ears.

‘I fear not,’ returned Henry, dryly. ‘He was so thoughtful as to write to his mother from Bristol.’

‘Wicked, _wicked_ girl!’ cried Mary.

‘Oh, poor Mrs. Rushworth!’ was Fanny’s contribution. ‘How she must suffer!’

‘She certainly suffers,’ said Henry, just as dryly. ‘And I fear her suffering must extend to you, Miss Price,’ he added, directing a most compassionate look towards the lady he named. ‘Her ire has fallen upon both my sister and you, for introducing Miss Thorpe to her notice, and so exposing her son to danger. I regret to tell you that you will not be welcomed at 14, Laura Place upon your return to Bath.’

Mary at once invited her to stay with the Grants, and themselves. ‘I do not think that will serve,’ said her brother. ‘Not, at least, while Mrs. Rushworth remains in Bath. Her anger is exceedingly great, and as the proper objects of it are likely to remain beyond her reach, it spends itself where it may.’ Custom might have inoculated Henry against the fury of dowagers; but he did not believe Fanny to share in his immunity. ‘Miss Price,’ he said, turning to her, and speaking low and earnestly, ‘if no better arrangements have been made by Sir Thomas, would you accept our company back to Northamptonshire?’

No better arrangements had been made—no arrangements had been made at all, despite Mrs. Rushworth’s projected departure for London; in all the distress and disruption of Tom’s illness, Fanny’s very existence appeared to have been overlooked by the Bertrams—or at least by those possessed of the power of ordering a carriage; for surely Edmund could not have quite forgotten his favourite cousin? Fanny, alight with anxiety, looked from Mary to her brother, and back. Mary looked her most encouraging; her brother, his most inscrutable. ‘If it would be no trouble,’ she said, at length, ‘I should be very grateful.’ Both sister and brother assured her that there could be no trouble, that Mansfield must be _quite_ on the way to wherever they were going—wherever that might be—and before Fanny retired—the day’s excitements and exertions having quite knocked her up—all was settled.

‘I see you have been busy, sister,’ said Henry, when he and Mary enjoyed as much solitude as a country tap-room might afford. ‘Here did I think I was enacting a tragedy, when it was a comedy all along! All we need now is for your parson to arrive come daybreak and ask for your hand, to make of it a perfect farce!’

‘I believe _you_ must have been busy too,’ she rejoined. ‘Let us now have the proper tale of you and that little witch in Charon’s Chamber, if you please.’

Henry called for glasses and a water jug; and after submitting the former to the care of his handkerchief, he mixed for them both a brandy-and-water from his flask. You may see how poor Mary’s character had been corrupted! She neither complained of his indulgence, nor shrank from taking her own medicine! Her brother drank his down, and even poured another, before he answered. ‘I own myself mightily relieved she has flown with Rushworth,’ he said. ‘I should not like to have the death, even of such a one as her, on my conscience. This must stay between us, you understand? No tattling to sweet Fanny—so sordid a tale would offend all her womanly sensibility.’

‘And your sister has none?’

‘None that I have ever discovered!’—The bats must have slipped his mind.—‘You should have been born a man, my love. I believe Isabella to have planned something of the sort from the outset—she it was, if you recall, who proposed our destination. We had hardly disembarked, before she threw herself upon my bosom.’ If Mary reflected on the perverse symmetry of their experiences—one to be embraced by a lady so experienced, the other so innocent—she kept her counsel. ‘When I declined her matrimonial invitation, she enacted quite a different scene, and threatened to rend her clothes, and cry ravishment—but I had thought to arm myself against such an event, with some intelligence from my poor friend Frederick Tilney, which soon put an end to that! Tilney, by the by, thinks her _quite_ the witch—he says she cursed him, and claims his luck has been frightful ever since! Then was I gentlemanly enough to let her take the boat. _That_ was my mistake—for when I came to retrieve it, the spiteful cat must have set it adrift!’

‘She most probably saved our lives!’

‘She might have condemned me! If the men from the village had not heard my shouts—’ Henry drained his glass again; and brother and sister shared a look, a hand clasp, but no words. ‘Now, if this inn can provide me with the necessaries, I must apply myself to the distasteful task of writing to Sir Thomas, to inform him that his daughter’s husband has flown with a fortune hunter—before he reads of it in the newspapers. For Mrs. Rushworth is not like to perform the office.’

‘I wonder at Mrs. Rushworth. To defend him, and lay all the blame on others.’

‘Do you? I do not. What would _you_ say, if it were your brother in her son’s place?’

‘The case is not the same! _You_ are not married.’

‘If I were to fly with Maria Rushworth, then,’ said he, with indifference; but Mary was not, in the event, gratified to hear her brother pronounce the two ladies so interchangeable.

‘You would never do anything _half_ so foolish!’ she cried.

‘Would I not? You have a better opinion of my character than I do!’ Henry spoke with all that self-deprecating solemnity of a man discovering self-reflection, as if for the first time in the history of mankind. ‘If we had gone to London, instead of Bath, and she had piqued all my vanity? I don’t know _what_ I might have done. I thank you from my heart, Mary, for dragging me to Bath—though it cost me five days laid up with the influenza!’

‘A mere five-day cold, my dear Henry! Men are made of such paltry stuff.’ And Mary playfully rapped the knuckles of the only man she could ever truly care for. ‘Only consider Mr. Rushworth!’

~*~

Now the author wields a magic pen, which in skilled hands can achieve any end. Whatever you wish shall be so! A rabbit from a hat—done! Mrs. Norris turned into a cat—my pleasure! You wish to peer into the future? I tap my quill upon the magic mirror, once, twice, thrice—pay no heed to those drops of ink that spatter up my sleeve! How we authors do suffer for our art! Now, behold!

Soon after Maria Rushworth resumed the surname Bertram, Mr. Rushworth gave his name to Miss Thorpe. Their marital felicity was all that might be expected from the harmony of their two characters, and the depth of their mutual attachment; Isabella bore with being a plain ‘Mrs.’ very patiently—or at least she never met a marquis whose purse she preferred. Maria’s misfortune benefitted all her siblings, in schooling them to consider other attributes beside income in their choice of spouse; how far they might profit from such education, let other pens inform. I quit such edifying topics as soon as I may. There, I am done with the Bertrams!

Henry remained desperately in love with Fanny, till the very day he fell in love with her equal. In Mrs. Crawford, he found all of Fanny’s virtue, beauty, sweetness, sense, taste and sound principles, joined with a talent upon the pianoforte that must always give them both exquisite pleasure. (You may have a name in mind; and if not her, it was certainly somebody very like her.) They tumbled into love over their mutually blighted prospects; but it took their sisters to point out their folly. Mary came to love her new sister almost as well as she ought. Had she been a harpist, it might have been more of a trial; but as it was, Mary could own Mrs. Crawford’s performance on the instrument to be really very superior, with hardly a pang, and even a little sisterly pride.

As for our two heroines, an account of their subterranean adventures appeared in the pages of _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ , to considerable interest from antiquarians. It even inspired more than one learned note in the _Philosophical Transactions_ regarding the mechanism by which their boat might have come to their aid; the gentlemen of science being united only in discounting the intervention of the divine, no explanation was ever agreed. What might readily be agreed is that so startling an adventure, must be most injurious to a lady’s peace of mind. All the balls and soirées, the rides and rambles, the painting of tables and the netting of purses—all those pleasant pastimes of town and country—must seem rather flat! Mary and her dear friend toured the Peak, the Lakes, and the Highlands, and the pair even ventured as far as Ireland; and on the resumption of the peace, their travels took them yet farther afield—Captain Price proving himself another invaluable brother—and one Francis M. Warkworth was kind enough to document their voyages; only their most inestimable of brothers were admitted to the knowledge of that gentleman’s history. But no gentleman could commit himself to so peregrinatory a pair of ladies, and neither Mary nor Fanny was ever fortunate enough to exchange the name her parents gave her for another.

Mary never learnt to sermonize without irony; Fanny never quite perfected the joke. The pair were ever like a lighted candle and its shadow—but which is to be which, now that presents a puzzle—to each fell her share of bright and shining parts, besides those that shrink away from the light. Apart were they weak; together, invincible! And when the little songbird did come to nestle in her great oak’s foliage, then were they both quite content. Now, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat!

18 December 2015

**Author's Note:**

> I thank labellementeuse for a most intriguing prompt, and the members of Picowrimo for discussions & encouragement. While this work is bookverse, it gains inspiration from Andrew Davies' 2007 version of _Northanger Abbey_. Several _Mansfield_ characters, especially Fanny Price  & James Rushworth, are constrained into enacting roles from _Northanger Abbey_. I have borrowed words both directly  & paraphrased from Jane Austen, not only from the two source novels, but also from _Pride & Prejudice_ and _Sense & Sensibility_. There are also quotations from Aristotle & _As You Like It_. 
> 
> Wookey Hole was a noted tourist destination from the 17th century, but the accessible caverns were quite different from the modern ones. The archeological finds described are genuine; many partial skeletons & several rings were discovered in the cavern described (now submerged) in the 1970s. Their escape, however, owes more to _Indiana Jones_ than reality.


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